


Christmas Special

by epkitty



Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Confessions, First Kiss, First Time, Gangbang, M/M, Promiscuity, Snowball Fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-02
Updated: 2011-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:19:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epkitty/pseuds/epkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A snowball fight, a kiss, a relationship, a confession, a reconciliation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Christmas Special 1

**Author's Note:**

> This ultimately began as a one-shot, which appears here as the first chapter. Then came the horrifying, horrifying sequels, continued here in following chapters.

When Glorfindel had gone to bed, he had done so in a thoroughly contented air of warmth and tranquility. The fire in the marble hearth of his room burned itself sleepily out as Glorfindel burrowed under the piles of blankets and quilts and furs, snuggling up to the gargantuan pillows that fluffed around him. Drapes and bed curtains were closed against the frigid midnight air of what had become a truly freezing winter, though not a sign of snow yet prettied the landscape.

Warmed by the food and wine in his belly and by the song of the eve and the dwindling fire and piled coverlets, Glorfindel smiled into the darkness as he pulled the blankets over his head, golden hair splayed out around him.

The cold of winter was delicious because the chill it lent to the air made things like hot-chocolate-laden kitchens, fire-bright mead halls, and downy-warm beds that much cozier.

As the great Elf Lord curled himself as tightly as possible around his pillows under the wonderfully warm covers, he thought the only thing that could make the picture perfect was another warm body entwined with his own.

= = = = =

Nothing could have thrilled Glorfindel more the next day when he woke with a shock in the early morning to feel a gentle tumult in his belly. He smiled and threw back the covers of his large bed, slipped into the fur-lined slippers and robe and ran to the windows, golden hair a mussed halo about his head and hanging down his back in snarled waves. He threw open the curtains and laughed to see a blanket of white carpeting Imladris, from courtyard and trees to fountains and gardens.

Snow was rare in Rivendell; it could be such a great hindrance to life, but sometimes the heavens just could not be stopped and, as on this occasion, Glorfindel was sure to make use of it.

He wrapped himself in two layers of leggings and shirts, a heavy tunic and outer coat, and thick, fur-trimmed boots. All of it was white, from toes to collar.

He was soon pounding down the halls still dark with lingering night. He snuck into the kitchens, already alive with the scents of baking and stews. Those who worked there greeted him merrily and Glorfindel was all smiles as he swiped a fried egg, sandwiched between two thick slices of toast. But so eager was he that he did not keep out a sharp eye as he was reentering the shadowed halls and only barely halted before colliding with a night-draped figure, face pale and eyes narrowed.

Glorfindel stopped short, rocking forward on the balls of his feet, mid-bite. He bit and chewed and didn’t quite swallow. “Coushelor Eshtoh!” he exclaimed. Then he gulped down the mouthful. Glorfindel blinked, wide-eyed, suddenly conscious of the crumbs decorating the front of his white surcoat and the messy hair that had been quickly knotted at the base of his neck. “Morning! Sorry about that! I was in a hurry, and you blend in so well with the, uh, sh-shadows and such!” Oh, and he’d been doing so well, too, until the end there.

Erestor lifted one slender eyebrow.

“Right. I’ll just . . . be on my way,” Glorfindel sputtered, sidestepping the expressionless, dark-haired, dark-eyed, pale, beautiful, wonderful Elf.

And he was about to continue on his way, disappear into the amorphous void of the early morning Imladrian halls, when Erestor unexpectedly spoke. “Good morning.”

Glorfindel nearly melted. He had said ‘good morning!’

The golden Lord turned back, but Erestor had already made his way into the cheery warmth of the kitchen. So, he smiled at the empty doorway, and for a moment cherished the memory of Erestor’s so rarely heard voice close to his heart. And then he moved on.

= = = = =

He slipped with a liquid economy of movement through the corridors that were slowly transfigured through the windows to an indefinable morning gray. Away he went to the rear square of the House, where Elrond’s twin sons joined him in garb similar to his own, only darker, just as the sun was rising.

Together, they raced across the untouched snow, carving three paths in the heavy whiteness that nearly touched their knees.

Once they reached the barracks, triple storied dormitories just alongside the river, they stomped the snow from their boots and split up to run through the halls, banging on the doors and walls as they went.

“Practice is cancelled today!”

“Snow today!”

“No training!”

“Stay in bed and sleep!”

“Do you hear?! Routines are cancelled today!”

“But if you have the nerve . . .”

“. . . Come to the courtside field in an hour!”

“And the games begin!”

“The games today!”

“There’s enough snow for the games!”

= = = = =

One hour later, a good few dozen grown Elves had amassed in the courtside field. They had brought sleds and were importing the snow that had been removed from the pathways so that there was a veritable mountain of it dumped along the far side of the stone wall, a wall that -- if followed -- led to the entry gate of Rivendell. They had evenly divided themselves up into four teams and each took a corner of the giant tourney field that lay between the House’s main hall and the city wall. The four corners were quickly taking the shape of forts, all snow and ice, hardened by the steaming water carried in heavy wooden buckets from the bath houses.  
 On the balcony above, passers-by would stop and watch for a while the antics of Glorfindel’s men acting like boys, riled up and moving fast from the stinging insults of Elrond’s sons thrown their way to encourage swifter action.

Several minstrels and maidens and other folk wandered the field as well, that early in the day, crafting sculptures in the snow, knowing the poor things wouldn’t last past the next few hours. Lindir was quite proud of a fierce dragon coiled with scales that he was working diligently on -- with icicle teeth and giant icy eyes -- and others were packing together the firm and heavy snow to make eagles and serpents and all sorts of snow-creatures.

Glorfindel was the master of field on these days, and he ensured that none of the overzealous soldiers started the wars early. As it was, some were already departing for races down the hill with their sleds in another part of the river-city, or to the pond for skating. Glorfindel himself took a turn at Lindir’s dragon, working on the incredibly long tail that would lie in a great pale spiral along the white earth.

Already, the golden Lord’s lips and cheeks and nose were tinged with pink as the blood warmed his face in the frigid air. Steam rose from his unprotected hands where they touched the freezing snow. He sang songs with the Elves in the field, welcoming the winter sleep.

= = = = =

Noontime found the mess hall (on the opposite side of the kitchen from the dining hall) full of snow-bedraggled elves, wet and laughing and rosy-cheeked, as they feasted on the stew that had been brewing all night and on fresh hunks of bread and cheese. They sipped at tall mugs of spiced mead and mulled cider and the low, darkwood ceiling rang with the sound of their laughter.

Seeking something a bit sweeter on the day of the winter games, Glorfindel braved the wrath of the cooks to dash through the kitchen and into the far more subdued dining hall, where no amount of stealth could hide the entrance of a white-clad warrior with golden hair swaying wetly down his back and leaving puddled footprints behind him as he slunk over to the sideboard.

“Jackpot!” Glorfindel whispered congratulations to himself upon finding his quest a success, for there, awaiting him in silver kettles settled in warm coals, was the hot chocolate. He quickly poured himself a mug before he could be chastised by any of the highfalutin Elf Lords and Ladies turning their noses up at him from the long tables set with delicate crystal plates and fine silver.

He took a sip and smiled as he felt the warm sweetness flow down to his belly and he clasped fingers still wet with snow around the heated drinking vessel.

But upon what was intended to be a swift and quiet exit, retracing his kitchen path, he found the way blocked.  
 Erestor stood before him, in those elegant black robes as earlier -- as usual -- staring disapprovingly at him.

For a moment, Glorfindel felt guilty. But only a moment.

“Lord Glorfindel,” Erestor reprimanded, and the golden Lord lowered his eyes, his whole form drooping in regret at the tone of the Counselor’s low voice. “The dining hall is reserved for those who prefer a more refined atmosphere for their meals.” His discerning eye traveled Glorfindel’s somewhat disheveled appearance and wet footprints. “You are not properly attired and your swift journey here is not welcome.” Oh, that voice, so low and mellow and tainted with just a hint of disappointment. Not loud enough for anyone else to hear, and that’s what hit Glorfindel hardest. It was just another scolding for him, as he again fumbled in the lordly manner he always tried so hard to emulate.

He still cupped the clay mug in his hands and he stepped back to bow low. His voice was hushed and full of remorse. “I apologize, Counselor.” But then he stood up straight and smiled at the face before him, at the indifferent expression that hid so much. “But the mess hall has no hot chocolate, and I so greatly desired some; they’d already removed the kettles from the kitchen and . . . I’m sorry.” Why did EVERY conversation with this Elf require the words ‘I’m sorry?’

Erestor inclined his head in that so-superior way of his and moved gracefully around Glorfindel without a second glance.

Closing his eyes and clenching his teeth, Glorfindel shook his golden head and moved forward, again barely evading the cooks’ wrath as he snuck between the counters of working Elves.

Once safe in a shadowed corner of the mess hall, smoky from pipeweed and tallow candles and the large, open fireplace, Glorfindel nursed his ill-gotten drink and punished himself far worse than Erestor ever could. It was stupid, he knew, to dwell on pointless desires and base fantasies, pointless to regret or even to fantasize at all. But he couldn’t stop himself, knowing even he as he moped that all would be forgotten within the hour, when he again rejoined his men in the snowy field to start the battle in earnest.

= = = = =

Once the sun had passed its zenith -- just recognizable this side of the growing cloud cover -- the courtside field was again filled with those soldiers who preferred this informal game to the midwinter festivities finally in full force in the distant Hall of Fire.

The troupe of elves, in their four armies, had finished their forts before the noonmeal and had moved on to more interesting things: assembling an arsenal.

On the hidden side of the tall fort walls were tightly packed balls of snow, some just in piles, or arrayed on shelves built by the more experienced players. The Elves chuckled gleefully, and Glorfindel paraded the center of the field, weaving between the sculptures of ice and snow and making sure that no illegal scouting was happening between the teams, or impulsive firing for that matter.

Tensions began to build, and Glorfindel ran a swift inspection of each fort. Some had built up miniature bunkers to hide behind just in front of their forts, with heaps of waiting snowballs. Others had created within the forts elevated platforms of packed piles of snow, to lift up those with the furthest reach. Glorfindel confiscated what slingshots he could find, but was certain that he’d missed some. He always did. Some Elves had worn thick hats as defense against head shots and others wore gloves.

Glorfindel preferred to go barehanded. There was nothing like natural body heat to fuse together the surface of a perfectly packed snowball.

He grinned as he watched itchy trigger fingers slapping the first of the ammunition between eager hands. Ohhh . . . those first ones -- packed hard and coated in a sheet of ice -- hurt like heck, Glorfindel knew. He retreated to the main door that looked out from the house at the center of the field. One hand held his first shot, but the other he cupped around his mouth, and in his booming Captain’s voice he shouted, “Fire at will! Fire at will!”

He laughed maniacally at the furious result. Balls of white whizzed through the air in an abruptly riotous blizzard, some falling short or overreaching the target in their excitement. He noted sourly that one team had managed to sneak a small catapult into their fort while his back was turned, and giant clumps of wet snow were soaring out from behind the white wall at a regular interval. Glorfindel let loose his first snowball, catching one of the offending team in the gut and sneaking by, scooping up another handful as he went to get in past the wall of the fort and swiftly disable the catapult.

He succeeded, but paid for his vigilante interference. He was pummeled while in the midst of the enemy, and his white clothes were covered in white snow, quickly melted at the contact with his body heat.

By the time he’d reentered the general field of battle, where snow statues were quickly being annihilated in the crossfire, he was dripping wet and laughing hysterically. In the utter thick of it, Glorfindel played his usual commando role, attacking anything that moved with quickly packed spheres of white snow, a target himself to any who wished to strike, but he was fast in the snow and difficult to spot.

All the same, no one could avoid the twins when they’d set their sights on a target. They came out of nowhere, one on either side, hurling snowballs as fast as they could scoop them up. Glorfindel dropped to the ground and rolled away, kicking snow up behind him. He fought back the best he could as things in the field degenerated into an all-purpose free-for-all, most Elves tangling into wrestling matches, forcing each other’s faces into the ice crystals that covered the ground and pushing snow up between hard bodies.

Through a roundabout trek of the field, Glorfindel succeeded in separating the twins, and he chased down Elladan in a long line beside the House, gaining distance and getting in a great number of sloppy hits along the Peredhil’s back.

But then, Elladan broke the rules. As he neared that central entrance to the House, he shot trippingly up the steps to the open doorway.

“Cheater!” Glorfindel accused in a heavy pant as he slowed, watching Elladan disappear into the entrance of the House. “Come back out here, Elladan!” he ordered, slapping an orb together between his chilled hands. “Or I WILL come in after you!”

As movement stirred in the doorway, Glorfindel released the tightly packed wad before realization set in and could only watch in shocked terror as the snowball collided with Erestor’s surprised face, exploding spectacularly upon impact in a cloud of spattered white.

On the field, no one’s sight left Glorfindel for long; he was too sneaky, and it was only a moment before the shouts and scrabbling and laughter of the mass fight dissolved into a sudden, horrified silence in the tourney field, a wartorn zone of white mounds and trenches and walls.

Glorfindel was staring, his hand clapped reflexively over his mouth, at Erestor’s immobile form for a frozen moment of stark hush. When the field finally started echoing sound again, it was to the noise of feet on wet slush.

Hunkered down shin deep in the snow, Glorfindel dropped his hand from his mouth and swiveled around to watch in disbelief as the entire army disbanded, fleeing. Into the woods, into the House, down the paths to the river; every single one escaped the ruined landscape, kicking the white shards up behind them, hair whipping in flaring streams of gold and chestnut and silver and honey and lastly, twinning ebony as Elladan reached out from the next door down to grab his twin and disappear into the House. Blue eyes grew wide at the sight of a company of fully trained warriors taking flight from one snow-ruffled advisor.

Glorfindel’s face screwed up into an amused grimace-smile.

Bah. Cowards. The whole lot of them.

Then, reality set in, the smile faded to a wide-eyed look of fear as he slowly bowed his head, counted to ten, and then looked up to the doorway.  
 Erestor stood perfectly still, even now frozen in the moment of impact, mouth hidden by a patch of white that was falling in small clumps to stain his immaculate black robes in splotches of wet. Always-mysterious black eyes narrowed to dangerous slits overarched by pencil-thin coal brows in a threatening V. His hands remained hidden, folded into the opposing sleeves of the thick and warm robes he so favored in the winter months.

He was so still, so absolutely motionless, that Glorfindel feared the Counselor must be internally quenching some unheard-of righteous wrath churning within the most visceral corner of his gut.

Then, Glorfindel hoped that perhaps Erestor was merely so stunned by what had happened that he simply hadn’t decided how to react.

As it was, Glorfindel could only stay, kneeling stock-still in the snow, freezing and fearful.

Then, Erestor moved. Slowly, as though to be sure that Glorfindel was watching, he withdrew a pale hand from the dark sleeve to reach up and deliberately wipe the snow from his face. He disgustedly flung the dripping sludge away, and his mouth was revealed.  
 Glorfindel blinked.  
 Erestor was smiling.

Glorfindel did not move a muscle, watching in fascination as Erestor moved. He glided sedately down the four steps into the ravaged snow world, robes trailing in the wet mush there. He gradually crouched and reached out two pale hands to gather together a clump of loose snow. He stood again.

Then, he launched himself at Glorfindel’s surprised form, toppling them both over to the ground so that Erestor could force his double-handful of snow down the back of Glorfindel’s shirts. Erestor was laughing gleefully, a pleasant if slightly vindictive smile on his face. And their hair -- gold and black -- tangled together with the wet snow.

Glorfindel just did not have the frame of mind to fight back, doing only what he could to defend himself against the shock of ice quickly transforming to freezing water against the skin of his back.

Finally, he got his own handful of the white frost and shoved it in Erestor’s face, forcing the Counselor away. But Erestor fought tooth and nail. He grabbed Glorfindel’s feet and dragged him across the ground. Glorfindel’s shirts and coat were pulled up until his bare back scraped against the wet ground and snow accumulated up the back of his shirt. He squealed and twisted out of Erestor’s grasp. He gathered himself for an attack and sprang, assaulting the dark-haired Elf in a bodily shove, who laughed as he went down.

They rolled together in the snow, laughing until Erestor gained the upper hand again, sitting on Glorfindel’s chest and throwing sodden handfuls of snow all over him.

= = = = =

Even for all this, Glorfindel’s mind was in a right state, unable to equate this sudden playful sprite with the Counselor he’d always known. A part of Glorfindel was disengaged from the activities, seeming to watch from beyond in another place and wonder so innocently how this Erestor could be the same Erestor he’d so long known.

This was a Counselor, his memory persisted, who in no way held with any concept of fun, who shirked his festival duties and ran away from parties. This was an Elf who smiled at nothing, even at what pleased him, who never gave paltry compliments -- preferring to criticize if at all possible -- who made it clear that he had only ever (at best) tolerated Glorfindel’s mere presence, and who certainly never laughed.

How many times had Glorfindel braved that frosty glare to invite Erestor into his life? Have a drink, a toast, a walk, a dance, anything with me Erestor? It was uncountable. And never once had this dark Elf accepted anything Glorfindel offered. Except for his apologies.

Glorfindel had sometimes, in his morose hours, wondered if Erestor horded those apologies like dwarves horded gold, holding all the “I’m sorry”s close to his heart in a collection of pilfered prizes from the resident hero.

So too Glorfindel had pondered that frozen facade of Erestor’s, so often wondered what it was the Elf was so determined to hide. And what now revealed itself.

Here was a creature glorying in all the playfulness Glorfindel had always ascribed to, reveling in the thrill of the moment, in the victory of a game, in the joy of the snow.

Had Erestor ever done this before? Was this some chink in what had always been his impenetrable armor? Why now? Why this? Why here?

Echoes of a resurrected life resounded in Glorfindel’s ears. One in particular, not so long ago, only a few years before Erestor had told him, so honestly confused and hopeless: “Who in their right mind thought strapping metal blades on their feet to waltz about on frozen water was a good idea?”

So many pointless echoes reverberated in his mind. After a drunken confession regarding Glorfindel-didn’t-even-remember-what, Erestor had simply turned to him and said, “Glorfindel, you’re drunk. Stop trying to be profound.”

And the closest Erestor had ever come to giving him a compliment, “You’re wonderful in a loathsome sort of way.” Delivered so eternally flatly that Glorfindel still had no idea how much of it might have been a rare surfacing humor.

That droll sarcasm that showed through the otherwise wintry and dauntless demeanor had captured Glorfindel long ago, caught him with the irrefutable charm so subtle he sometimes thought he alone saw it. And so he had been caged, unbeknownst to Erestor, by the Elf’s delicate allure, and spent too many waking hours wondering at what else might be hiding beneath the cold if handsome exterior.

Some part of Glorfindel had feared that beneath Erestor’s constant shell was only emptiness.  
 Today, the first snowfall of a cold and drab winter, proved otherwise.

= = = = =

All of this came crashing down on him like the proverbial ton of bricks in a martyred moment of clarity, as Erestor squashed him in the pillowed snow, stuffing handfuls of cold, wet slush down his shirt.

A wall had been breached, a door opened, a secret revealed; however you wanted to look at it, and Glorfindel was stepping through, breaking through, taking it over and not letting go.

He arched up under the Counselor’s weight, throwing him off. Erestor landed sprawled in the snow next to him, hair a hopeless batwing tangle of damp frost, eyes sparkling, cheeks rouged with the biting pink of the cold, and lips softened in a free and open smile.

Forgoing any pretense of attack, Glorfindel gently rolled over him, lightly pushing Erestor back into the soft layered white of the blanketed earth, caressing a face that was hot under his chilled hands, a face slowly wiping itself of emotion, chasing back the sudden joy and growing confusion to a mask of comfortable indifference.

Glorfindel wouldn’t let it. He hunted down the last of that smile, finding it hiding in the crease just outside Erestor’s dark eye. Glorfindel laid a kiss there, soft lips over fluttering lashes. He pulled back, but only a fraction, his mouth brushing for just a second against Erestor’s cool nose to kiss the corner of a flat mouth. With a hand on either side of Erestor’s head, haphazardly tangled in the loose, bedraggled hair, Glorfindel whispered against that mouth, “Don’t you retreat from me, Erestor. Not now. Later,” he practically sobbed, shocked at the emotion in his own voice, “Later, I’ll let you, I promise; I won’t chase you if you tell me not to, but right now, you stay here with me, don’t you go anywhere.” The words became a plea became a mantra running one into the next like so much babbling birdsong, but Glorfindel didn’t care, smoothing strong hands through midnight hair, along ivory blushing skin. “Stay here, stay with me in this moment, please, please stay, Erestor, please kiss me.”

He hadn’t meant to say that, not out loud.

Suddenly, the sky did what it had been threatening to do all day, and quietly unlocked itself to cover the earth in another blanket of white, clumps of pale flakes falling like cherry blossoms, huge and hushed all around them. The snow was not silent, not truly, and its gentle fall seemed to muffle all the world as flakes settled, little shards of ice, in tangled hair and in the rubble of snow all around them. Melting on their skin.

A snowflake landed on Erestor’s nose, and his eyes widened and briefly crossed to glance downward at the funny sensation. When he looked back at Glorfindel’s hopeful almost-smile, Erestor grinned.

He leaned up, away from the ground with hair uncoiling in damp, yarn-like strings behind him, as the snow fell around them in the broken field, and he uncertainly -- with brow knitted in concentrated deliberation -- sought Glorfindel’s parted lips.

Glorfindel needed no more encouragement, almost biting in sweet disbelief at the mouth beneath his, all too willing to bruise those lips to a reddened blush, to crush and to mash, to nibble momentarily at a lower lip.

Erestor made some noise, some unnamable keening sound buried low in his throat and Glorfindel answered in kind, with a desperate yet thankful moan as he fell fully atop the robe-encased body, hands moving to cradle Erestor in his arms.

If this was only a moment, if this was going to be the only moment, Glorfindel was going to make it a moment so perfect in his mind that it would become a token, a talisman, kept near his heart to cherish when he needed it most. If this was their only moment, he was going to love it and nurture it and stretch it no more than it should be stretched, to keep it perfect, like an untouched field of newly fallen snow.

When the kiss weakened, when the press of bodies lessened, when even his own clutching hands turned soothing of their own accord, Glorfindel pulled away, canting his head to the side, his eyes still closed to the world, his fair brow creased in a frantic desire to imprint all of that into his memory like a brand scarred into his skin. Irremovable.

He felt Erestor tense suddenly beneath him and Glorfindel awoke from his premature remembrances, looking down into frightened black eyes.

Erestor reached up with those pale hands to lay them against Glorfindel’s chest. He wasn’t quite pushing, maybe steadying himself.

His eyes were frightening to Glorfindel, because the golden Lord had never before seen such depth of emotion there; it was like walking into your own room and finding it somehow indefinably but permanently changed. Something so familiar suddenly so different. “Glorfindel,” Erestor whispered in a voice that was also itself and yet not, “Glorfindel. What do you want? What are you feeling? Tell me; don’t think and don’t censure yourself. Tell me what you want right now.”

Glorfindel bowed his head and moved to the side, propping himself on an elbow so that his other hand could take one of Erestor’s and bring it to his lips. He closed his blue eyes and smiled. “I was thinking,” he slowly decided, “remembering going to bed last night. How I love it, going to bed in winter. It’s like going home, like comfort food, like hibernation. Like a perfectly made bowl of porridge on a cold morning, or the biggest, fluffiest blanket wrapped around you when you’re a small child. I went to bed last night happy and content, knowing that if I wanted for anything, it was to have you in that bed beside me.”

“Why?” Erestor desperately asked.

“Because I love you.”

“Oh.” Erestor, again laying back flat in the snow, looked up at him, confused eyes wavering. “What am I supposed to say?”

Glorfindel managed a chuckle. “There is no ‘supposed to’ between us. Why don’t you tell me what you want?”

Erestor nodded and he reached his hand, the other still held tight by Glorfindel, to dance whisper-soft along a star-fair brow, a pointed ear, golden snarled hair. “I’m tired of hiding,” he cried, tears forming and falling as quickly and beautifully as the snow, crystallizing on now-pale cheeks. “So long I thought I could protect myself from the ravages of love--”

Excited, Glorfindel broke in, “Then do you--?”

Erestor frantically shook his head, more tears spilling over, “I can’t say the words, not yet. This damn snow!” he shouted suddenly, as a large flake landed in his eye. He closed those coal-black eyes and steeled himself and opened them again. He reclaimed his hand to frame Glorfindel’s face, as though to regain lost attention, an unnecessary gesture, since Glorfindel was entranced. That shaking voice. “Someday, I’ll tell you my stories. But today, I cannot. Someday, perhaps, we’ll be happy together. I can see how it could be. If you can wait for someday, Glorfindel, then you may have my love too. Can you?”

Glorfindel laughed. “Out of nowhere the Valar have blessed me!” he suddenly declared, his own blue eyes not empty of tears. “I will wait, Erestor,” he said simply. No restrictions, no demands. “I will wait.”

Then Erestor’s arms moved to encircle him, drawing Glorfindel down like a blanket to cover him. He whispered in that gently pointing ear, “Can I sleep in your bed tonight? Just--”

“Just sleep,” Glorfindel agreed. “Yes. I would welcome it; you cannot know how. We will find our warmth together.”

“But right now,” Erestor whispered. “I am very cold. And wet. And uncomfortable.”

Glorfindel started laughing again. He couldn’t help it. “So am I!”

= = = = =

Together, they made their way to the crowded bathhouse. They shed their clothes self-consciously and pretended they did not blush. They sank into the delicious warmth only a body exposed to winter snows can appreciate.

They went their separate ways and wrapped themselves in warm clothes for the evening meal, which they ate in a darkened corner of the mess hall, ignoring the greater portion of the world around them.  
 And then, then Glorfindel led a shaking Erestor to his private quarters.

It was late and they were exhausted. A servant had tended to Glorfindel’s fire, and he built it up just the smallest bit; it was the only light in a room closed off to the outside world. He faced Erestor and carefully observed, “You’re shaking like a leaf.”  
 Erestor uttered the first of what would be many half-frightened confessions. “I am terrified. I have only ever shared my bed with books and virgin moonlight.”

A pang shuddering in his heart, Glorfindel went to him and enfolded this strange, new, marvelous, still sarcastic and lovely Elf in strong arms. “No terror, here. Please, not in this room. This bed is for sleeping. Come now.”

And Glorfindel himself gently stripped Erestor of his clothes, all but for the long shirt. He led the dark-haired beauty to his bed and tucked him in under the covers. Glorfindel quickly disrobed and donned a worn pair of cotton trousers. He crawled in opposite Erestor. The bed curtains were drawn but for the side that faced the fireplace, and only the tiniest flares from the fire allowed them to see one another. “Can I hold you?” left Glorfindel’s lips as Erestor said, “Will you hold me?”

They laughed and moved to embrace one another, warm in the night under the piles of covers.

“I don’t know, precisely,” Glorfindel wondered, “what happened in the snow today. But I am thankful for it.” He caressed Erestor’s dark head. “And for the possibility of ‘someday.’”

Erestor peered at him with a familiar expression. Not guarded, exactly, but slightly critical and very content. “Good,” his voice was drained, tired. “Now hush, and let us sleep.”

And they did.


	2. Secrets 1

Glorfindel had had a routine. For that matter, so had Erestor.

But then came a moment. In the snow.

And there was a confession of love on Glorfindel’s part, and a possibility of someday on Erestor’s. They had gone to bed together. Not as lovers. Not exactly. It had been, for them, a matter of comfort and connection. An acknowledgment of affection, a sign of some union, the beginning of a new relationship for them.

After that, things between them changed. And things in Imladris changed, for such a great change had overcome Erestor. No longer did he shout at the children who ran through the halls, criticize his underlings, glare so mercilessly. No longer did he haunt the library’s archives by day, nor disappear at night. No longer did he strike fear into the hearts of all he met. And no longer was his face pale as snow, but colored as though emotion stirred there. Erestor, somehow, had internalized from the world. His focus had turned from outward to inward. He was quiet but not belligerently so. He was . . . different.

Glorfindel had not appeared to change so much, though he might have been a bit jollier. A bit quicker to smile, slower to anger. He was, undeniably, happy.

Every night, the same thing happened. At the end of the day, Erestor knocked on Glorfindel’s door, and Glorfindel let him in. Glorfindel’s bed became their bed. They were never intimate. They did not kiss. They did not speak of love. They lay in bed together, and it was good.

= = = = =

Glorfindel, for a long time, for over a year, made not a sign of complaint. He did not want to encroach on Erestor’s feelings. He truly did not mind waiting for Someday. But he would join Erestor for meals, or creep into his office. And he would be content to sit and to stare with unconcealed devotion. In bed, he would lovingly wrap strong arms about the dark Elf and tell him, “I am glad to have you here,” or something of the like. He always made an effort to show that he definitely wanted Erestor in his life.

But in those months of sitting and staring, staring at shadow-dark eyes and lily-white skin and coral-pale lips, Glorfindel began to hunger. Not madly or passionately, not lustfully, not forcefully. It was only a little hunger, as of a man who is not starved, but only craves dessert. He would stare at Erestor’s mouth, and want.

And so, one day, as they sat together on a balcony bench overlooking the twilit Valley, each reading a book of their own choosing, Glorfindel decided to speak. He did not do so all at once, but rather would close his book, open it again, set it aside and take it up again, before finally Erestor said, without raising his eyes from his own pages, “Speak, Glorfindel. Do not fidget so. I cannot evict you from the balcony, nor am I apt to leave, whatever you might say.”

Glorfindel raised his brows and when Erestor finally looked up to meet his wide, blue gaze, Glorfindel smiled. When he spoke, saying just what was on his mind, his voice still fidgeted a bit. “Erestor, oftentimes I wish to kiss you, but I am wary of intruding where I might make you uncomfortable; I just wanted you to know.”

Erestor laid aside his own book and answered, “Glorfindel, if ever you want to kiss me, then ask, and I shall tell you whether you would be welcome or not.”

At this, Glorfindel smiled again. “All right. But I must also tell you this: that if ever, EVER, you want to kiss me, you are welcome to do so and need no permission, for you already have it. Though if you feel the need to ask, then of course you may do so.”

Erestor grinned at this lengthy, carefully considered speech. “Very well then. May I kiss you, Glorfindel?”

Glorfindel’s smile lit up his face like the sun shone there and he practically bounced in his seat with excitement. “With pleasure, you are welcome to kiss me, Erestor!”

Then, Erestor’s pale hand rose to Glorfindel’s cheek, and he caressed the warm skin there, looking deep into trusting blue eyes.

Glorfindel patiently waited. This was Erestor’s kiss, to do with as he pleased. And he was gentle about it, and slow. Glorfindel was not surprised. But he was still undoubtedly elated when Erestor’s nervous lips covered his, a cautious and curious and delightful exploration of teasing nips and sweet suckling.

= = = = =

Later, Glorfindel was sure to add much kissing to their repertoire of gentle conversing and silent communion. But never in the bedroom did he approach Erestor in such a manner. He had made a statement, an oath, he thought. In the very beginning, he had said, “This bed is for sleeping.” He maintained that thought forever.

This bed, Glorfindel’s bed, was for sleeping. No fear, nor terror here. Only sleep.

= = = = =

Years passed. Glorfindel grew to recognize the differences in Erestor’s smiles. What had once been a single, unfamiliar expression became sweet or secretive or devious or amused or loving. Kisses, too, had their individual meanings, turning playful or passionate in turns. One memorable evening was spent doing little aside from trading tempting kisses.

Still, Glorfindel never tried anything more. He could see Erestor was not ready, he could tell. And so he trained his own body, cooled his own rousing lust, basking solely in the unique joys of love.

As Erestor and Glorfindel slowly worked to merge their lives together, they each learned to accept their own joys, to accept the thrill of a shared life, to accept what came with the gives and takes.

= = = = =

Every night, the same thing happened. At the end of the day, Erestor knocked on Glorfindel’s door, and Glorfindel let him in. Glorfindel’s bed had become their bed. They were never intimate there. They did not kiss there. They did not speak of love there. They lay in bed together, and it was good.

But then one night, Erestor would not enter. At the threshold to the bedroom, he stopped. He merely looked with cold, black eyes at Glorfindel, hiding something. “I must sleep in my own bed tonight, Glorfindel.”

Gone cold with shock, the golden Elf hung upon the word ‘tonight,’ desperately believing that this was temporary, a one-time occurrence, an anomaly. He longed to grab Erestor’s hand and drag him in, to protest and plead, at least to question, beg an explanation. But then Glorfindel told himself he had known this would not be easy, this would not be a simple path that lay before them, this would not be anything resembling easy, and he had to have known that Erestor would need his own time, his own space to deal with these changes. So Glorfindel smiled through the threatening tears and told Erestor only, “I will miss you.”

= = = = =

For the first night in over three years, Glorfindel lay in his bed alone. And he was miserable.

= = = = =

The next day, Erestor was wary, as though he expected Glorfindel to lash out or hold some grudge, but Glorfindel appeared properly attired for the dining hall for breakfast, and greeted Erestor with his usual smile.

Their day may have been a little strained, but it was nothing unexpected after such a sudden rupture in their routine. And when dinner was done and nighttime fell, Erestor followed Glorfindel to his bedroom as usual.

But as soon as they reached the door, Erestor did the same thing. He halted at the doorsill. He looked to the floor, to the wall, to anywhere but Glorfindel’s tremulous blue eyes, and said, “I cannot sleep here tonight, Glorfindel. I am sorry.”

Again, Glorfindel was overcome by instinctual urges to do everything in his persuasive power to keep Erestor with him, in his room, in his bed. But he knew that would not be right, that Erestor truly held no obligations to him, and that he might very well need this time apart. Lying only a little, Glorfindel answered, “I understand.” He smiled, or tried to, and refused to cry. He said, “I will miss you.” And that was the utter truth.

= = = = =

Again, Glorfindel slept in his bed alone. And he felt wretched.

= = = = =

The following day was harder for them. The tenseness that had grown remained and deepened. Smiles did not come so easily, and no kisses passed between them.

That night, Erestor repeated his avowal. “I cannot be with you tonight, Glorfindel.”

And Glorfindel, beginning to fear that Erestor was drawing permanently away from him, still maintained his inner strength, and said only, “I will miss you.” This time, he did not fight the weeping.

= = = = =

His sheets, that night, were salted with tears. He did not sleep. He feared for what he had accepted to be his future. He feared it would not be.

= = = = =

But the next night, as he sat waiting in his room, there was a knock on the door and Erestor walked in before Glorfindel could even answer. Erestor weakly smiled and changed into his sleeping clothes. When Glorfindel still did not react, Erestor crawled under the covers and lay waiting, watching the golden Elf.

Glorfindel dove into the bed and pulled him close. “By Elbereth, I missed you!” he declared into a face full of silky black hair. “I thought . . . Oh Erestor, I missed you! I love you, you know? I love you.”

And Erestor let him say it. And if Glorfindel’s embrace that night was slightly stifling, then Erestor easily forgave him for it.

= = = = =

Routine resumed.

But, as the years cycled their seasons, there were nights when Erestor would say, “I cannot sleep here tonight,” and Glorfindel would answer, “I will miss you.” But never did the occasion arise where Erestor would leave for more than a night, and Glorfindel never complained.

In a place such as Imladris, it seems that people ought to have noticed what was happening between the two, but they did not. People were curious, true, but they did not pry. Glorfindel had few friends and Erestor had none, so they had nothing to explain. Perhaps the only one who took a vested interest in what passed between them was their Lord. But even Elrond did not dare interrupt the delicate balance growing there. He only watched.

= = = = =

One morning, as Glorfindel sat alone before his mirror (Erestor always rose very early to depart his room in the mornings), there was a knock upon the door. Glorfindel twisted with difficulty, with his arms oddly coiled about his neck in an effort to braid his hair, to face the door. Cheerful as always (annoyingly so, some might call it) he hollered, “Come on in!”

Erestor opened the door. He was wearing, for the first time in Glorfindel’s memory, leggings and a tunic, with tall boots, and he had a bag slung over his shoulder. His eyes were dark and expressionless as the moment they had met and in his hand, Erestor held a slim book.

Slowly, Glorfindel’s arms dropped to his sides and his golden hair fell streaming to either side of his face in a short-lived waterfall. “Erestor,” his voice wavered, whispering full of trepidation, “why are you in traveling clothes? Why have you packed your things?”

Erestor’s voice was cold. “I need time away from you. I am going with Arwen to visit Lothlorien for a time. Do not worry; I will be back.”

Glorfindel found that his throat was choked with fright and he could not speak. He watched with wide blue eyes as Erestor handed out the thin book. “My secrets are here.” Glorfindel took the narrow journal in a shaking hand. Erestor hitched the bag further up onto his back. His dark eyes remained mysterious; Glorfindel could not read them. “Please do not open it ‘til you know I am gone; then we will both of us take the time for thinking.”

Everything within Glorfindel rebelled, saying that this wasn’t right, that Erestor couldn’t possibly be leaving him, not just out of the blue like this. Glorfindel barely restrained himself from leaping to his feet, from grabbing hold of Erestor and locking him in this room so that he could never threaten to leave again. But still some strength must have been in him, for Glorfindel only held the book tight in both hands and said, as tears flowed, “I will miss you.”

= = = = =

Glorfindel stood at his window, holding to Erestor’s wishes. He watched the escort party below, Arwen and Erestor among them. He watched them set off and when the last of the troupe finally disappeared through the gate, Glorfindel returned to the vanity to sit on his stool, open the book, and read.


	3. Erestor's Letter

Glorfindel. These are my secrets. I entrust them to you.

I was the son of a cooper. I was the sixth child, but the first son. I remember my life very clearly then, as though a child’s life is simpler, as though I do not want to remember the things that came after. And that sounds just about right.

I was the son of a cooper. My first memories are of sitting upon the floor of my father’s workshop. The scent of the newly hewn wood surrounded me, embraced me. The rhythmic scrape-scrape of the file and the wooden churning of the awl. The sawdust upon the floor like a carpet of tawny-white, auburn-gold, or brown dun. The barrels stacked in rows against the wall. My father’s sweat, his straight hair, his height and his strength. I remember far more clearly the sight of his boots than the sight of his face. He always wore red boots, though no other colors. Only grays and browns.

I was the son of a cooper. My first toys were the amazing spiral shards of wood that fell like snow from my father’s hands as he shaped the timber. The delicate curls lay in clumps about me and I would test their strength, stretching each one until it broke, or curl them up inside one another or mash them to dust.

My first lullabies were the songs my father sang as he worked, songs sung by carpenters, cartwrights, and coopers the world over, songs of trees and death and wood and art. Songs of love, the love of one’s craft. These songs he sang over and over as he made the barrels that would house the wine, port, ale, and other goods of the kingdom. I remember how he used to test each one. After binding it with the huge, flat metal rings, he would reach inside to pound reeds of willow in the cracks, and smooth a resin over the whole when done. When the resin had dried to a hard, smooth surface, he would fill the barrel with water and let it sit overnight.

Those are my first memories, but my only memories of my father. The story, I am told, goes like this:

Every month, the Elves who labored in our forest as lumberjacks would drive their wagons by our house to deliver my father’s portion of lumber, but he was keen to experiment with a new breed of tree, so he went walking in the woods himself, with an axe in his hand. He should have known better really, than to be in the woods by himself intending to fell a tree. But many people could, and did, tell me of how happy the cooper had been to have finally fathered a son. He loved his daughters well, no doubt, but every father longs for a son, especially fathers who have a legacy to pass on, and my father’s legacy to me would be our trade, the trade of a cooper. Babe though I was, I think even I understood that, as I sat playing with the heavy twisting clamps I was not yet strong enough to lift.

But my father went out to the woods alone that day, perhaps sidetracked with his head full of thoughts of his son, who knows?

I do not, for he died that day.

An arrow, the king’s arrow, pieced his eye in a tragic hunting accident that struck my father dead.

It is believed that he was mistaken for a deer, for his hair is dark like mine and rare among our fair-haired people. The king’s men brought the body back and a pyre was erected on the Burning Field near the river. I do not remember it.

I remember crawling across the frosted ground from the kitchen to my father’s workshop and finding it dark and empty.

My father was a cooper, but I would not be.

I grew up in the Greenwood. I grew up in the Greenwood when that name still fit it, when there were no evil, poisonous beasts to foul our land, when our land was still truly green. The caves that now house the palace and too many homes were vacant and mysterious then. We lived close to the land, in low cottages. And the King and his family had great rolling Houses with tall limestone columns and heavy curving architecture. I grew up in what was considered the soul of the Greenwood. Those royal houses and the great courtyard there and the town square: they were the heart, the heart of the Greenwood. And the Wood itself, that was the body. But surrounding the small merchants’ city that ringed the town square were the rolling green fields of the farmers.

The farms that fed the people of the Greenwood were lands that had been slowly, carefully cleared of the forests and turned with tender precision to raise the wheat and corn and rice that would be made the staples of our food. There, in the countryside of my home, fields of green were carpets of cabbages. Dark brown soil held the potato crop. Sprouts of vegetation would become barrels of carrots, and miles of roped poles drooped heavy with the vines for our wines.

My father’s workshop and our home were situated just at the edge of one of these fields. It was a field of corn. This field belonged to my father’s brother, and he willingly helped to care for my mother and her children.

I remember, when I was quite young, being tied into a sling about my mother’s hip. I went with her everywhere for several years. But as soon as I was deemed old enough to wander about on my own . . . Well. You can be certain I did. I got into everything. I got into our pot of flour and covered everything with it, especially my sisters. I stole cookies from the cupboard at every chance. I played after every rainfall in the mud and pulled down stalks of corn to make cones of green, like tents to hide in. A child’s duties on a farm were many, though, and I worked hard, even then. Since my hands could perform the task, I’ve been husking corn. And in the house, churning better, shelling peas, pealing potatoes, scrubbing floors, and laundering the clothes. I did it all and I loved it. Sometimes, my sisters complained about the chores, but I never could. It was as though our family was a living, breathing unit, one whole made up of seven individuals.

I did not know at the time of the great lengths my mother went to for me. She accosted every woodworker in the Greenwood, looking for a master to apprentice me off to. But her way was difficult. I was too young to have any experience, and quickly getting older. And all the craftsmen had their own sons, you see, often more than one. They would not take on a boy to whom they held no obligation. And one of those young Elves, fifty years my senior, married my eldest sister and moved into my father’s workshop. They built their own cottage on the other side of it, but he was still young and making his own way. He would not take his brother-in-law as apprentice.

And so my destiny became clear. I would be a laborer on my uncle’s farm. I did not have a problem with that. I thought it was bound to be jolly good fun. And, for me, it was.

Life, still, was not easy though. No, not for a family of women without a breadwinner. Without the trade of my father, we had no income. My father’s brother and sister’s husband did what they could for us. But still, in comparison to most stable families, we were having a rough time of it. We never went hungry, that was for sure. But some things, we simply had to do without.

For example, I was a young boy, a growing Elfling. Why bother spending money on cloth or clothes that will soon be outgrown and unusable? There was no good reason. Without any other boys my age in the near family, the solution was simple. I wore my sisters’ old clothes.

I hardly interacted with anyone but my mother and sisters; to me it was nothing. Clothing was clothing, and I was young enough that I ran about naked half the time anyway.

But the years carried on, swiftly in fact, and I grew older. I was still a boy, and growing conscious enough of society to know that boys did not wear dresses. For whatever reason, this still did not bother me. After all, we all have bodies and we all wear clothes. I’d seen the grand robes of great Elves on splendid horses traveling the roads past our lands. How different is a frock from a robe?

Quite different, I was to find out.

After living in a house where my mother only vaguely apologized for not having other clothes to give me and where all my siblings fondly called me ‘little sister’, I stepped into the role, finally, of youngest sister. In our family, the youngest child had always been charged with one of the more energetic tasks: the unexpected trips to market. When we unpredictably ran short of something, it would be their job to run the hike to market. Market lay twelve fields up a slight incline from our home. We did not keep horses.

My first trips to market had been on my mother’s hip every third Saturday, and later I walked with my tall sisters crowded around me. Now, for the first time, I made the journey myself.

I cannot tell you how proud I was, deemed old enough to go to market myself. One failing of our family was that we kept few animals. Only a few chickens, for eggs and occasionally meat. Supplies had run low, and none of my sisters had ever been trained to poach, even if they were old enough now to do so. My uncle had given us enough, too much my mother said. And so I went to market, head held high and feet quick to march, my pockets full of coppers and in search of meat for that day’s dinner, and salt to stock the shelves.

The corn was tall on either side of the road for some time, and grew shorter as stands of trees separated the corn from the wheat, the wheat from the barley, the barley from the cabbage.

I sang to myself as I walked the road, meeting hardly anyone on my journey. But in the end, but two fields before the trees ended and the city began, I met a bit more of my destiny. Three boys were on the road, little older than myself. I recognized them at once; they were the sons of a nearby farmer, who grew grain for the mill. Like myself, they looked forward to lives of hard labor and little else.

But boys at that age are impulsive, and as soon as they saw me, their minds went to work. The eldest, whose name I knew was Dinilion, halted with his brothers. They stopped, watching me approach. My steps might have slowed, but I never felt truly intimidated. Finally, as I drew near, he called out “Hey look, a little orphan girl on her way to market! You must be youngest of the bunch; haven’t seen you. Must be buried in the pack that comes crawling in on Saturdays! Whutcha doing without yer brat sisters to protect you?”

Well, I planted my fists on my hips and gave him a telling-to. “We aren’t orphans!” I shouted angrily. “Our mother takes care of us! And I don’t need protection on this road, you big bully!” And then I called them some other names that I had overheard my cousins using as they worked the field.

As you might imagine, they certainly weren’t happy with that. Dinilion, impulsive as I would learn he always was, ran straight at me and with a firm push to my chest, sent me sprawling to the road. “You show respect to elders and to men, little slut! When you’re a couple years older, I’ll spread your legs and teach you a lesson!”

Frankly, I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. But I knew it was mean. I stood up, brushed off my red skirts, rolled up my red sleeves, and gave him a hollering. “You uncouth swine!” I cried. My mother always said I’d had a way with words. “How dare you push me! You’re no better than a filthy cur, pushing me about. As for elders, only those who respect me earn my respect in turn, and as for men, I’m as much a boy as you are!”

Maybe something shown in my eye, the glint of a challenge recognizable to all boys, for they all three of them took a step back and stared at me in shock.

That only lasted so long, however.

Three smiles came over three dirt-stained faces. Before his brothers could say anything, Dinilion asked me, “What’s your name, then?”

I told him.

Maybe I shouldn’t have.

They passed me by, just like that, and didn’t look back. As soon as they seemed a safe distance from me, they turned back around and Dinilion shouted:

A boy in a dress  
What a mess  
When he’s in distress  
He’ll just give a yell  
A prince will come  
But then turn numb  
Instead of a lass  
He’ll save a lad  
And then go mad

Not very witty, but quite a head for rhyme had Dinilion.

And to this day, I curse myself for wearing a red dress. Dinilion started up, and his brothers soon followed. Chanting, over and over, “Scarlet Harlot! Scarlet Harlot!” They made it rhyme, in high-pitched, ringing, rhythmic voices, “Scarlet Harlot! Scarlet Harlot!”

I turned my back on them, and held my head high. But all the way to market, their cries of Scarlet Harlot rang in my head; I could not rid myself of the horrid rhyme.

I went about my business and returned home. But in a house such as ours, my depression went unnoticed.

I soon overcame it, though, and destiny fated another meeting for me, to counter my association with Dinilion.

Young enough that only a portion of my day was taken up with chores, I slipped out of the house and into the cornfields. It was my favorite time of year, when the corn was high, but not yet harvested. Heavy ears drooped from strong green stalks, and I ran the rows of the field, losing myself in a race with no one. I whispered a child’s secrets to the corn, as though I could commune with it. Sometimes I fancied I could.

In the end, I turned south, to the southern end of the field, to the little stretch of forest that divided my uncle’s corn from our neighbor’s rice. In this particular area, a stream ran through, and I crawled my careful way down the stony incline to the bottom, where wildflowers grew in abundance from the rocky bed. The cool stream meandered and the trees were high and thin above, casting great patches of golden sunlight down into my secret haven.

I sat upon my favorite rock. It was flat and I could dangle my legs into the water if I so chose, and the flowers grew in a half a ring about me, their sweet green vines creeping toward me with their little tendrils. That particular day, I tucked my feet under me and arranged my white skirts about me. The dress was old and worn, but new to me, so not quite yet dirty. In fact, it was the first day I had worn it. Although it wasn’t silk, it was smooth as, and I thought it very comfortable. I undid the long braid that kept my hair halfway free of tangles. I ran my fingers through it and picked a few stray weeds to plait into the hair behind my ears, as I’d seen my sisters do.

“Hey! Little girl! What’s your name?”

I suppose anyone would have thought me a maiden.

Taken by surprise, I momentarily looked up in shock, my hands on my cheeks.

A boy stood upon the rise opposing me. He ran down the slope, silver hair in a braid behind him. He stood, barefoot like I was, just beside the stream and looked at me. “Oh, I’m Elstras,” he added, as an afterthought. “You’re one of my neighbors, aren’t you? The corn daughters?”

I stood, self-consciously plucking the flowers from my hair. “Yes,” I told him, “But I’m not a girl.”

He did not, of course, believe me. “You look like one,” he told me.  
 I had to admit that I did. I shrugged my shoulders. “I’ll grow up quick. When I do, it’ll be worth it to get proper clothes for me. Until then, I wear my sisters’.”

He seemed unimpressed. “Why don’t you get your mama to alter them?”

“She’s got better things to be doing.” I was very defensive of my mother. I suppose all boys are. “I don’t mind the dresses.”

He smiled at me. “I bet you don’t have any friends.”

I was confused. “I have sisters,” I pointed out.

“So do I,” he told me, and then added with a laugh, “It’s NOT the same.” He looked me up and down, and then plodded across the stream. It was neither very deep nor wide. He stepped up upon the stone to look me in the eye. He was shorter than I, and younger. He was looking at my skirts. “Are you SURE you’re a boy?”

I scowled. “Of course.”

It seemed he was going to question me further, but finally he decided, “Okay.” He eyed me up and down one last time. Then said, “Wanna play?”

It had never occurred to me that I might enjoy playing with other children. I had quite a bit of fun by myself, occasionally I played with my youngest sisters, and I also found amusement in my chores. All the same, I answered, “Sure.” I was always up for a bit of fun.

And after that, Elstras and I had every kind of fun you can imagine. As much trouble as I had got into as a toddler, the two of us got into more. We ran amuck in the countryside. We journeyed to what I thought were amazing places, confined as I had long been to the cornfield and my uncle’s barn. Elstras took me to see the mill, the winery, the granary, the distillery, and the great underground grain stores.

In turn, I took him to the market. Elstras had never been in the city, and so I introduced him to the wonders of the pastry shops, the butcheries, the fisherman’s wharf (which wasn’t exactly a wharf, since we only had a river), the flower sellers, the candle makers, and the tavern where you could get two mugs of cider for a copper, which we did.

It was not long before Elstras and I ran into Dinilion and his brothers.

There was to be a barn-raising two fields over (which was how country children measured all distances) and boys like us were expected to keep the men supplied with water and cider. Elstras, by virtue of his mother’s soft heart, had leant me some clothes. After living in dresses, the breeches and shirt that were too short for me were quite a change, but -- on this occasion -- a welcome one.

We arrived just before sunrise with my eldest unmarried sister, who had brought two baskets full of sweet things she had baked and was hoping to catch the eye of one of the farmer’s sons. I knew which one. He was just her age and the eldest and would inherit a portion of his father’s wheat field. He was tall and strong and gifted with red hair. I’d never seen an Elf with red hair. Even though people marveled at my own ebony locks, it was my own hair and I thought nothing of it. That, however, was how Dinilion finally recognized me.

Not long after the raising began, a cried trio of “Scarlet Harlot” rang out above the heads of all, and my face went red.

Elstras did not understand at first, merely turning his head and trying to peer through the crowd. “What’s Dinilion all in a bother about now?”

In hushed tones, I related to Elstras my first and only encounter with the brothers, who, like Elstras and my mother and most in our land, were gifted with that misty silver hair.

Elstras fumed. “Bastard. Just like him, too.” He shook his silver head and told me, “Never mind him. He’ll pick on anyone shorter than he is, just because he has a chance to work in the mill. He’s fooling himself though. He’s gonna be a farmhand all his life, just like us. You wait and see.”

“All the same, I’d just as soon not run into him here.”

Elstras agreed, and we determined to stay on the opposite side of the barn site as the three brothers.

Dinilion was smart enough to keep off my back when so many people were present, people who would at least take objective interest in someone being pummeled.

But after the raising was complete, when my dark-haired sister was sitting under a tree with the fire-haired wheat son, and the barn stood nearly complete before us, and the sun was setting in the west, Elstras and I left with the masses to return home.

Halfway to home, alone on the road, we were stopped. Dinilion jumped down from an overhanging tree before us, and his brothers appeared behind us. “Well, Scarlet Harlot. Seems you got yourself a boyfriend. Este Elstras.” He chuckled.

“You think yourself quite a wit,” I said. I turned to Elstras to say, “Quite fitting; it seems they’ve one wit between three brothers.”

Dinilion fumed. “I can hardly decide if your taste in clothing has improved.” He finally called me by my given name.

I smiled. “He must be shamed,” I told Elstras, though I leveled my stare at the flaxen-haired mill son, elder and taller than the two of us. “I think he had a crush on me when I was dressed as a girl.” Elstras giggled.

Dinilion reddened and stuttered. “Twerp!”

“Is that the best you can do?” I easily teased. “Why, you’re all bluff and bluster, Dinilion. Know what that means? All bark and no bite. Like a tame wolf.”

“And you’re a boy who wears dresses; what does that say about you?”

I only laughed at him; Dinilion didn’t bother me. “Whatever you want it to!” I told him. “Whatever you wish to make of it.” Then, I grabbed Elstras’ hand and we skipped off past the bewildered youth for home.

Elstras seemed impressed that I had somehow avoided all physical contact. “Dinilion loves nothing better than a good brawl!” he told me safe in the shadowed rows of my uncle’s cornfield, the moon and stars guiding our dawdling feet.

“We’re too young to brawl,” I thought aloud. “What’s he gonna do, gimme a black eye? I think I can take it.”

“Why DIDN’T he attack us?”

“Because he doesn’t know what to think of me; I’m too different. And I confused him. But I don’t think I’ll manage to do it again.”

And I was right.

Two weeks later, I was sitting up on the kitchen counter, my dark-haired sister dabbing at my face with water and puckweed. “I never thought I’d see the day,” was the beginning of the hour-long lecture that ended in, “You’ll be cleaning yourself up next time!”  
 I didn’t doubt it. Though I was privately very proud of my battle scars. Elstras and I had got into a rumble with Dinilion and his brothers, whose names I learned were Lathor and Burren. The scrap rolled us into a patch of thorns, and you can imagine what we looked like after that. For a scuffle of two on three, I’d say we walked away all pretty even. My face and hands were covered in tiny cuts; I’d a split lip and sported a greenish-colored black eye. Proud I was, yes, very proud. Of the five of us, I was probably best off as well. I’d been wearing a dress, which -- though hindered my movement -- protected against the worst of the stickers.

And when my mother attempted to give me a second sermon on fighting, I was ready. “But mom,” said I in my most innocent voice, “you try being a boy my age who wears dresses! What was I supposed to do? Wave a hankie and let Elstras defend me?”

Not only did I not get a lecture, but she laughed and gave me a kerchief bound up with cookies to take over to Elstras.

And three days later, I had my very own outfit of well-fitting trousers and tunic. Complete with one of my father’s belts, which I had to wrap around my waist twice.

That, however, was not my last fight with the mill sons. But every time, I would just pick myself up, dust myself off, and go on my way. Sometimes I didn’t even bother to go home; I’d just get a telling off anyway.

Still, my family was not impressed. It didn’t bother me, for I could understand. They were women after all. They just didn’t appreciate a boy’s need to tussle.

I bid a final farewell to the dresses that I’d grown up in. They’d served their purpose, but I was done with them now, growing steadily taller, though Elstras had long outstripped me in height. I would soon become a man.

And the following year, Elstras and I joined the harvesters. This meant that as the fields around us ripened, we moved in turns to harvest each crop. Our harvest range covered over a dozen fields, mostly west of our cornfield, and five different crops.

I’d never experienced anything like it. I’d never worked so hard in my life. I picked and plucked and lifted and scythed and carried and hauled and dug and pulled until my muscles screamed and my body ached and every night I would fall dead onto my pillow with the setting of the sun. I’d never been so happy.

Working the fields was a race against time. And a race against Elstras, who worked beside me. And -- to our horror -- Dinilion, Lathor, and Burren lived close enough to be part of our team as well. We never let our rivalries interfere with our work, however. The five of us once worked together as a team over an acre of wheat in less than a day. We were highly praised and rewarded. We came to an unspoken agreement that competition this way was a whole lot better than duking it out in the dusty roads and bramble patches.

One day, the first day of planting five years later, I discovered that I fit into my father’s boots, and his old clothes as well. And so I wore my father’s red boots, fondly remembering the sight of them when I had been a babe.

So, we grew up together. Elstras, Dinilion, Lathor, Burren, and I. There were others our age who we associated with, who we organized games with, but the five of us were close. After each harvesting, we worked together assembling the great field feasts that took place in the empty countryside. We battened down each others’ barns and homes for the short Greenwood winters. We bent over the endless stretches of earth together when the time came to sow, and swam together in the river when the sun was high and lazy.

We grew strong together. We teased and played and worked together. And Dinilion and I, we still tossed insults. And Elstras and I, we still had our own time in the tiny valley between our homes, where yellow and purple flowers still grew upon the rocks.

And when our bodies awakened, Elstras and I loved together. As though it were the most natural thing for two male bodies to entwine as one in such devoted comfort. For us, it was.

I remember that first sweetness, that first mutual relief. It was in the shadow of my father’s old workshop we first kissed. It was in the shade of the tall corn we first touched one another. It was in that little valley I first took him in my mouth. And it was in the loft of my uncle’s barn he first entered me.

And so, Glorfindel, you see, I lied to you. “I have only ever shared my bed with books and virgin moonlight.” It could not have been further from the truth.

I don’t think I can put words to that thrill, that amazing indescribable sensation of taking him inside me, becoming one and sharing this ecstasy, and then letting go.

I wanted to do it again and again. He called me insatiable.

I wore him out.

We reveled in life, he and I. But I doubted that anyone loved the pure thrills of life as much as I did. Every waking moment was so full that I never dreamed of ever wanting anything more. I loved to play. I had learned that at a young age. I loved to work; I knew that too. And Elstras taught me that I loved to have sex.

Years passed and the seasons maintained their cycles, and so did we. Harvesting days were just that, stretching our sore muscles to the limit under the beat of the sun or in pouring rain, and sleeping like stone through the night. Feast days were full of preparation. Sowing time was nothing but just that. And there were still days spent rollicking in the fields with the mill sons.

But then Elstras and I had our other time. In the high summer, while the green things grew. And in the short, dead winter, when the fires never went out. Those were the times when we might lock ourselves away for days, doing nothing but discovering the joys of our bodies together.

Then came the day that defined my life.

It was true that I loved sex, that I could have kept going long after Elstras was spent. It was true that I loved to tease him, laying there nude and stroking myself and gazing unrepentantly at him. It was true that we snuck off to my uncle’s barn loft to make love when duties were light and the noon sun was high.

It was no oddity, therefore, that one hot summer day found us lazily thrusting together in an old pile of blankets in the barn’s loft.

When Elstras finally came, he let out only a soft sigh, my body skillfully milking him. He rolled off and to the side, for the loft was hot, made hotter by the sun streaming in open windows, which we had hoped would tempt in a breeze. We lay there, comfortably close but not touching, sweating and breathing hard, and basking in the overall deliciousness of it.

Maybe we drowsed.

At any rate, we were taken off guard when Dinilion popped his head up over the edge of the loft. “. . . didn’t answer me, but I could have sworn I saw you two head in here . . .”

His leaf green eyes grew round.

No one could have mistaken the scene for anything other than it was.

I smiled at Dinilion.

What else was I to do, really?

Perturbed, he turned his hopeful gaze to Elstras, who lay tanned and tall beside me. He glanced at me and then downward, as if to say ‘close your legs.’ I shook my head, as if to say ‘no way.’

We understood one another far too well.

In the end, Elstras gestured Dinilion forward with a jerk of his head. Dinilion slowly acceded, climbing the rest of the way to stand near our feet, looking down at us.

I’d always admired Dinilion in a distant sort of way. But lust-crazed as I was, I finally noted the pure godliness of his form. Unlike the rest of us, he had grown not only tall, but broad, a massive figure of an Elf, all hard muscle, packed into tree trunk thighs, rock hard chest, and muscle-corded arms. My smile grew. How could I have ever failed to notice? And with that fall of classic Greenwood silver hair and eyes the color of a summer forest?

And I could tell that the sight of me did not leave him unaffected. He was far too tense. I made an effort to open my legs further. I touched myself shamelessly, one hand stroking myself to hardness, the other teasing a tightening nipple. “What was that you first said to me, Dinilion?” I slurred his name delectably. “‘Respect your elders, little slut. When you’re a couple years older . . .’”

“‘I’ll spread your legs and teach you a lesson,’” he remembered that forever-ago day on the road, eying me with interest. “You don’t seem to need any lessons, but you sure paint a tempting picture.”

I glanced at Elstras. He was amused to the point of having to hide his smiles in false yawns.

“I think wearing dresses messed him up,” I heard young Burren (I would always call him young Burren, though he was older than I) whispering to tall Lathor (who was indeed the tallest of the mill sons).

They, of course, had followed their brother. And two sets of pale green eyes were peering over the edge of the loft as they stood beside one another on the ladder. I couldn’t see their mouths, only two giant pairs of eyes framed by silver hair. I snorted and rolled my eyes and Elstras finally let out the guffawing laughter he’d been holding back.

I can only imagine the way my eyes lit up. Elstras always said I got this little twinkle when I knew I was about to get laid, and that my eyes turned black at the point of ecstasy. “Hey Dinilion. Why don’t we give your brothers a demonstration?”

He did not complain and, in fact, began to undress, rolling those great shoulders as he removed his shirt. “A demonstration of what?”

“Of what they get to do with me when you’re done.”

That lifted Dinilion’s eyebrows.

I got my own chance to raise my eyebrows when he removed his trousers.

Thankfully, he started out slow; he was a lot bigger than Elstras. But then once we found our rhythm, there was nothing like it. As he pounded me into the straw-strewn floor, I suddenly recognized the possibility that not only was each lovemaking unique, but so would each partner be.

Elstras removed himself to sit against the wall as Lathor and Burren cautiously crept closer -- but not too close -- to watch.

And watch they did. The way I reveled in it, thrilled at every sensation. They watched what Dinilion did with his hands, they watched what he did with his body. I believe we taught them well. And when we felt the peak nearing, we gave as good a show as we could, without loosing that internal, shared marvel of first-time lovers. As much as we took our pleasure, we performed for our audience, all moaning sighs and shouted curses.

“Hey guys,” Elstras managed to warn through his laughter, “do you want even more of an audience?”

I only made efforts to increase my noise, and Dinilion finally shut me up with a kiss.

I came like that, with his lips over mine, and him thrusting forcefully into me. I would grow to love being taken like that. I loved it already.

His release followed shortly and, as Elstras before him, he rolled off to the side, sharing the ratty old blankets.

I giggled and looked to his brothers. “Who’s next?”

Elstras and Dinilion shared a look. They couldn’t believe it. “I didn’t think your lust was, in reality, unquenchable,” Elstras worriedly observed as Lathor and Burren quickly tossed a coin.

I smiled and rubbed myself against the blankets, ran my hands through the straw, plucked at my nipples. I’d never been so sensitized.

I think Elstras heard something I did not, for he suddenly pulled on his trousers and shot down the ladder, seemingly faster than I could see.

It didn’t concern me as Lathor bared his body, all lanky sinew and silver hair. I smiled and gestured him toward me. As quick as Dinilion had always been in his rhymes, Lathor was truly the intelligent one of the trio, and he had proved it in the many conversations we had shared side-by-side in the field or splashing in the river.

He had observed everything very closely, and he was sweetly careful when he entered me, though it seemed nothing could have hurt me at that point. I was too far-gone.

I stroked his body as he stroked within me, and I did my best to show him pleasure. He was quick to spend and, I think, embarrassed, but I kissed away any shame and let him move off.

Only then did I hear voices from below. There were people in the barn, talking, and Dinilion was spying down on them. But I was pretty out of it by that point. The words blurred and disappeared altogether when Burren came to take me. I smiled sweetly; he had always been the quiet one. I had always been glad to have someone around who was shorter than I, and he was nearest my age of the three brothers. We shared something like -- but, I suppose not TOO like -- brotherly affection.

He was far less restrained than his brothers, and entered me with one swift thrust. I barely noticed Dinilion wince in sympathy, but I do not remember it hurting. Burren’s movements were swift and shallow, and I cautioned him to take his pleasure more leisurely and draw it out. He heeded me and deepened his thrusts, slowing at the same time.

When he finally came within me, I orgasmed as well, and our low groans rumbled through the air.

As Burren moved away, I heard shouting.

Carefully, I levered myself to my feet, their seed dripping down my thighs. Burren lay, oblivious, in the hay.

Dinilion tried to shoo me back, but I approached the loft’s edge to look down. Nearly a dozen of what had been our old playmates were trying to get past an increasingly nervous Elstras. Their shouts of lustful curiosity died away, however, at the sight of me.

I smiled down at them. “So many. No bother coming up; I’ll come down.” To avoid the muck on the barn floor, I only pulled on my old red boots.

I climbed down the ladder, quite brazenly. They were moved to utter silence, as was Elstras, who was trying to convey with his eyes that he knew what I was planning and that it was a Bad Idea. I could see the capitalized phrase, right there in his gaze.

I looked about, pleased to see a neatly stacked pile of hay bales, not yet fed to the animals who, in their stalls, ignored us. “Dinilion,” I lazily drawled. “Send down a blanket.”

If I rightly recall, Elstras made furious gestures of refusal behind me, but Dinilion obeyed me, sending down the blanket like a giant, flickering leaf. It fell into my arms and I spread it on the hay bales stacked no higher than my thighs and crawled upon the makeshift bed like a whore.

“Who wants a go?”

Young and energetic and unattached, none of them left.

I smiled and spread my legs.

They all took their turn with me, some more than once.

Some of them showed me some interesting new things, and I showed them quite a bit more.

I remember every one. Each once my playmate now my lover, and each unique and wonderful. Daronath, one of those with that rare fire colored hair. He was thin, but strong, as we all were from the work in the fields. Younger than I, and with bright burning eyes. He moved to me first, wicked and lovely. Ratannon, with gilded hair and nervous smile. Wieril, strong and broad; he gave me quite a pounding. Silivren, a classic Greenwood beauty; he had the look of the princes. Ateldir, still young and awkward and oh-so tender. Berrihan, merry always and a joy to make love with. Yajhavir, hair tainted with chestnut and famed for his skill at poaching. Ilahir, the silent barley son; I’d never heard him speak until he lay against me and whispered my name. Wipher, a sliver of a lad too young to know any better. Celidrir, another silver beauty, this one willowy and determined. Magorad, the oldest of the lot, and by far the most experienced.

Fluttering in the background, Elstras had swiftly evolved from amused to nervous to downright concerned.

I wasn’t. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. It was hardly as though I could die from too much sex. I had the virtue of being both an Elf and male. I couldn’t get sick and I couldn’t get pregnant. I was young and lust-crazed and satisfying all my friends to the best of my ability. It was the best day of my life.

In the end, when they had gone, and the mill sons were cleaning away all evidence, taking the blanket away to burn, Elstras stood -- green eyes filled with concern -- looking down on me.

I can’t rightly recall much about those moments, tingling all over with satiation and need. I think Elstras was dumbfounded that I was still aroused. I hadn’t counted, but maybe he had, the number of times I’d climaxed. Looking back, I don’t really want to picture how I must have looked, sheened in sweat and dripping with semen, dark eyes lost to lust. I remember, though, what I did. I held out my hand and called for him.

He took it. “I can’t,” he pleaded. “After . . .”

I looked over. He was hard and ready. Despite what he thought of my condition, I wanted him in me. “We started it,” I growled. “We’ll finish it.”

And we did. I pulled him down and he took me there in what had been reduced to a pile of straw. We mated like animals in the barn and I loved it.

Later, when we attempted to leave, I discovered that I could not walk.

Elstras wrapped me in a one of those old blankets and carried me to the stream. He bathed every inch of me in cool, clear water and playfully counted the love-bites that covered my skin.

He carried me up the other side of the bank and through the field of rice to his family’s home. He snuck me into the cottage and into his bed, where we curled together like puppies in a pile.

I fell asleep, knowing that I had just lived a day that would change my life forever.

After that, the seasons continued to turn, but my life took a turn for the better. I doubt many other people saw it that way, but I certainly did.

Like a wildfire could take to a dry field, whispers of my escapade in the barn burned across the countryside.

The many Elves who had been there sought me out days later for a repeat performance. I willingly obliged them.

Weeks later, I was a changed man. Again, my fashion adapted to my life. I took to wearing long tunics that reached halfway down my thighs and nothing beneath. Still wore my old red boots though.

My ring of lovers grew. How else were lusty young men to occupy themselves in the hazy days of summer, the merciless monotony of winter? When I was so willing?

Everyone knew what I was.

They called me a whore.

I maintained that ‘harlot’ was a much more dignified word, and whether or not Dinilion revived the term, the name Scarlet Harlot was soon how the people of the countryside referred to me among themselves, helped along by the sight of my father’s old red boots. Scarlet boots.

I moved out of my mother’s cottage. In the end, I converted the loft of my uncle’s barn into a home for myself, with his permission. He must have known what I was up to, but he never acknowledged it. I didn’t much care either way. I lived a life of hard work, fun play, and good sex. I didn’t need anything else.

In the Greenwood, there was this old song. I walked the roads to market and to my lovers, singing this old song. It was one that was known to every child in the Greenwood. It was taught to me by my sisters, and I had sung it with joy in the company of Elstras and Dinilion and his brothers. It was one of those things when you stopped understanding the words, so often we sang it, dancing in circles in green fields of yellow flowers.

And, older, I sang it on the roads, laughing at those words. It was an announcement to any who knew me. If you hear me singing, you have but to follow the sound of my voice.

I am what the Valar make me  
I am a child of the firstborn  
A shadow who walks  
A tree who talks  
I am what the Valar make me

I am an Elf, I am a child  
I am the sum of my parents,  
The wish of my king  
I am an Elf, I can be anything

I am what the Valar make me  
A ship that sails,  
A bird that calls,  
The babe that wails,  
The snow that falls

I am my dreams,  
I am my hopes,  
I am what seems  
To be the future  
I am what the Valar make me

It is written  
It is seen  
In the stars  
In the everything  
I am what the Valar make me

One day as I sang and walked, my tunic skirt flapping in the breeze, my black hair dangling half-loose in the open air, my scarlet boots kicking the dirt up behind me, I saw a horse approaching. I continued my song and thought nothing of it. But as it drew near, I saw -- seated upon the beast’s back -- an Elf tall and proud with ivory-pale hair and leaf-green robes. I hadn’t a clue who it was, but when he drew up aside of me and halted his mount to look curiously down on me, I performed an inexpert bow and declared, “Good day, my Lord!”

He smiled and inclined his head. “A good day it is indeed, my country youth. Tell me, if that song is true, what have the Valar made you?”

I grinned lecherously and lifted the hem of my tunic to reveal myself to his avid gaze. “Take a guess.”

A slight blush overcame him. Still, he seemed old. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, but I knew he was far older than I. I’d never lain with anyone more than a few hundred years my senior. But he seemed more along the lines of ancient. I grinned. I told him my name and said, “If it does not displease you, we could make a bed of reeds to lie in for a time.” I knew that road far too well and I gestured to a stand of trees behind me. “There’s a place not far from here.”

He smiled through his blush. “That’s just fine.”

I introduced myself to his horse and led the beast into the open trees. The Lord dismounted and removed his outer robe to hang upon a low branch. He was attired in shirt and leggings, which revealed a fine figure and he was just my height. I led him deep into the glade, which housed a burbling brook and a flat clearing perfect for the nature of my common rendezvous. In fact, the delicate green grasses were still pressed flat from a previous day’s tryst.

After I’d thrown my boots and tunic aside and lay naked in the soft grass, I watched him disrobe, I watched him watch me. “May I ask your name, stranger?”

“I am Silinde, advisor to my King Oropher.”

I smiled widely. “An advisor. I’ve never met anyone so . . . lofty.”

It did not take long for us to get things underway, and you can be sure he taught me a thing a two. A few tricks to remember for later.

When we were done, we bathed in the brook and bid farewell and he went on his way.

I began to look forward to my encounters on the road. I seduced and was seduced by soldiers, traders, craftsmen, scholars, laborers, and every other assorted citizen of the Greenwood.

And still I continued my trysts with my old playmates, and especially my loving interludes with Elstras.

As though every claiming filled me with life, I felt as though I grew in my enjoyment of it, in my own effervescing sphere of contentment. Joy is the word, I believe. I took joy in it.

Every joining thrilled and excited me, and left me feeling more complete, as though giving of myself always meant I received something equally as exciting in return.

I never longed for anything but the joys of life. To savor the taste of my food, to fully enjoy every drop of my drink, to thrill at the physical labor of my work, to relish my fatigue at the end of the day and to delight in the pure joy of arising each morning. If it is true, I thought, that old song: I am what the Valar make me, then I am joy. The idea, the thought, the mere *word* of sin never crossed my mind. Sin was something evil, was it not? Something base and vile and irreverent. Something harmful to oneself or to someone else, and what I did was none of these. I gave and took only joy.

And perhaps others did not think the same, did not understand, did not approve. Certainly many did not, my family did not. My mother, my sisters grew apart from me, ignored me when they met me on the road, turned their backs on me in the public square, shut the door on me when I came to visit. I was different in so many ways, and they did not understand.

But I considered that I had enough tolerance for all of us. I understood that I was unique, that they could not accept what I had become, what I had grown to be. And that was all right.

I rarely thought then on my lost trade, on my lost father. Only more and more common has it become for me now, in the security of my Imladrian home, to wonder on what would have been if my king had not unknowingly slain him, if I had grown to learn the skills of a cooper and carry on the family line.

As it was, we lived our blissful, unchanging lives in the rolling green fields, the marketplace, the free and open wood.

___________________

Then, one year, the crops failed. Nearly half of them.

We had fooled ourselves into living a timelessness, a summer of country existence, without cares or concerns. For me, my five hundred years was an eternity, and I had expected it to go on forever. We all had, I think, all of us country boys.

After the first shock of watching field after field turn to pestilence, after wandering in devastated silence the blighted potato crops, the empty husked corn fields, the withered vineyards, after all this failure, my memory becomes hazy.

For then came the spiders. We had no warning in the country.

Years before, my eldest sister, whose husband had become one of the Greenwood’s coopers, had given birth. I remember shouting and screams. I remember fires. I remember the body of our mother, blackened with poison, bent over in the rotting field.

I remember running in the night for the caves, with Elstras beside me and the mill sons behind me and my little niece cradled in my arms. Her parents were dead; that’s how I thought of them then, her parents, not my sister, not my sister’s husband. She was my niece and her parents were dead. It did not hurt so much to think of it in those terms, it made sense to an Elf who was barely a man and had no preparation for anything resembling this wave of evil that swept the land.

Elstras carried a scythe, I remember. With the ferocity of a bear whose family is threatened, he cut down a spider that sprang up before us. Dinilion, Lathor, and Burren carried what weapons they could. A shovel, a hoe, and Dinilion had his father’s sword.

We all had tears in our eyes, but for my little niece, who was too young to understand the dying screams in the distance, the raging fires of the fields, the great shadows of the spiders.

Maybe because we were young and swift, we were among the first to reach the caves.

There were women screaming for their dead children, husbands weeping for lost wives. Children were few. Like my niece, only those who could be carried had survived.

We cowered together in a corner, touching one another as though to be sure we were actually there, petting one another’s tangled hair and holding sweaty hands, while brave Burren snuck through the caves.

When he returned, he had word. He was breathing hard and still held his shovel tight in his hands, as though waiting for an attack. “The royal family is here; they are already organizing defenses. They are asking us to organize ourselves. Farming families this way.”

We followed him through the deep dark of the caves, lit by smoky tallow candles and poor torches. We found familiar faces in that long stretch of cave, even as we faithfully repeated the names. Names came to us as we huddled along the wall; those known to be dead and those missing. We passed the names through the caves, sending on messages. Every once in a while, the piercing screams of those who mourned were punctuated by the happy cries of reunion, but not often enough.

I was only destined to find one of my sisters, the one with dark hair like me. She had turned from me in the past, but all was different now, and we held our silver-haired niece between us and mourned.

Then, to our shock, her fiery haired love appeared. He knew, of course, what I was, but he had never judged me, and I had always silently appreciated his indiscrimination. Abruptly, he said, “I mourn with you your loss.” I could see he had his own losses. Like us, his eyes were haunted. Then, he said to me, “I had intended to ask your mother, but now it is left to you. May I have your blessing to wed your sister?”

“My blessing, yes. You would have had our mother’s blessing, the blessings of our family. I hope the Valar keep you, I hope your lives grow full of love and peace. I know that you will be happy together, should Eru permit it.”

Then I handed my niece over to them without a word. They understood.

___________________

Our lives, then, became a hundred-year shadow of darkened caves, of spider attacks, of orcs ravaging what had been our city. I worked alongside my friends and lovers, digging further down into the earth, carefully widening out what would be the halls of our homes.

My trysts took a different nature then. Silent we were, and quick in the depths of the caves, always with a lookout. They traded me around, shared me like I was an eternal light that they each wanted to shine over their lives for a short time.

I didn’t count the years, in truth.

And there was nothing to break the monotony. The seasons ceased to exist for people who barely saw the sun as it was. There were no feast days to divide the waxing of the years. When you’ve seen spiders the size of small horses destroy your home and kill your family, your faith in the Valar diminishes.

___________________

Whispers pervaded the cave finally, whispers of a war to come.

In due course, the king’s men came. They searched out all male Elves who could wield a sword. We were working in the caves and they were moving down the line. I listened.

“Name?”

“Dinilion.”

“Father?”

“Fealion. Deceased.”

“Trade?”

“Farmhand.”

“Skills?”

“I wield a sword.”

“You’ll be in the King’s battalion. Second company.”

I listened as his brothers answered the list of questions. They, too, claimed skill with a sword, though they had none. They got their wish when the soldier coolly told them, “King’s battalion. Second company.”

“Name?”

“Elstras.”

“Father?”

“Eldinir. Deceased.”

“Trade?”

“Farmhand.”

“Skills?”

“Sword. Spear. Archery.”

“How good are you?”

“Good.”

“King’s battalion. First company.”

It was true, Elstras had been far better educated and well-rounded than myself, though he was hardly a warrior.

My turn came next and I answered with detachment, as my friends had done.

“Trade?”

“Farmhand.”

“Skills?”

I exchanged glances with Elstras. I’d never held a weapon in my life and he knew it. The king’s man raised his brows, waiting. He didn’t have all day. I shrugged and looked away.

His partner, who had been recording everything, moved to make the mark beside my name that would define my destiny, but then the inquisitor happened to look down. “Hold on.” He looked up into my face. “Those boots. I’ve heard about you.” He smiled at me. Smiles were rare in those days, though I saw more than most. I smiled back. “You’re the Scarlet Harlot.”

Somewhere behind me, I heard Dinilion groan.

I nodded.

The king’s man turned to his partner. “Give me that.” He grabbed pencil and paper and wrote something beside my newly entered name. “We have a place for you,” he assured me with a leer. “You’ll travel in the rear company.”

“What company is that?” I questioned.

He did not meet my eyes. “You won’t be there to fight.”

Then he moved on down the line.

___________________

Day and night smeared together. Weeks were distorted into months. I remained attached to my friends as well as I could. We ran errands for the king’s men; we gathered for the march to the south.

My life had lost any concept of cycle. Sometimes I ate, sometimes I slept. Sometimes I stood guard, sometimes I packed wagons. Sometimes I stitched tents, sometimes I lay with my friends, or other, needful men.

Before I knew it, we were marching. I was in a party near the middle, with the King, the princes, the advisors, the other keepers of other things. I hardly knew who was who. I knew that my friends marched on the perimeter, keeping the spiders at bay. I went days without seeing them, though everyone who marched was accustomed to passing messages. Every once in a while, a soldier would suddenly walk beside me, “Elstras sends you his best wishes.” And he would move away again.

It was good to know that even parted, we were not alone.

And when halted, so that the majority of us could sleep, I did not sleep. Men already sick with the journey, hateful of war, longing for home, came to lay with me in the night.

Each of those stops on the long road, I was the only one who always erected my very own tent. I welcomed anywhere from three to ten a night.

They needed what succor I could give them.

___________________

One day as I walked, weary and confused, a horse stepped up beside me. I looked up into familiar green eyes and smiled. “My Lord Silinde.” I nodded respectfully.

He greeted me as cheerfully as one may on a march to war. “I thought I saw you among us. Where is your armor, your weaponry?”

I had grown used to the question. “I have none.”

“Why are you here then?”

I gave him a pointed stare. “I am here to give comfort to the men.”

___________________

Soon, our banners joined those of Lothlorien. Then, on the last days when the sun still shone and the air was not hazy with campfire smoke, I could make out the standards of the High-King, of Lindon, of Imladris.

But the Elves of the Greenwood were proud and secretive even then. Without strictly stating it, I was forbidden to ‘associate’ with any ‘foreigners.’

I obeyed. I was frightened enough, marching to war without any knowledge of what that truly meant.

Sorrowfully, I looked at the faces about me. Warriors there were, yes, soldiers. Oropher had always kept his military men in great numbers. But among them I saw too many faces that I knew. They were not the faces of soldiers in any way. They were craftsmen, cooks, and farmers like me.

With such large numbers, our stops for rest were larger and less organized. I made a habit of wandering the fires, speaking to the men. I would sing, tell jokes, and explain exactly how they could find my little tent, if ever they wished to visit. I was saddened to find nearly all of my friends there. In fact, the only lovers I ever had who were not there, were not there because they had already died in the initial raids on our land.

My only relief was that my new brother-in-law, for that fire-haired Elf had indeed wed my sister, was not among our companies. Perhaps they would indeed know peace.

___________________

When our final camp was made, at the end of a long line of tents of Elves and Men, it was in the shadow of Mount Doom, for that blasted place was always visible. One had to close one’s eyes to not see it. And death already surrounded us. The Dead Marshes were not then what they are now, but they still carried that name.

But I saw little of camp. Instead, it seemed I lived in my tent. And they came to me, one after the other. And I gave them what they needed. Whatever they asked for.

It was always good to see familiar faces, though. Elstras, Dinilion, Silinde.

The time drew near, I knew, for the first attack, for what would be the beginning of years of battle. I could sense it, even if I did not overhear the whispers.

“He is too confident.”

“We’re all going to die.”

One eve, as I lay naked and alone in my scrap of a tent, I heard someone calling my name. One of the king’s men stuck his head inside. “You’re to come with me.

“My clothes . . .” Bleary-eyed, I glanced around.

“You won’t need them where you’re going.” The soldier leered at me. “It’s the King’s tent you’ll be sleeping in tonight.”

For a moment, I could not move. But I slowly roused and pulled myself together.

I thought then, on the King.

I wondered if he suspected that I was the son of the cooper he had killed. Or if he even cared. Like the rest, he would take me to his bed to sate whatever it was he needed in my body. Lust, fear, connection, anxiety. Often, it seemed, they sought me out merely to escape from the reality of war. And I welcomed them all. It was what my king demanded, and the only thing I thought I could offer. Some were so young, far younger even than I, and others were survivors of long distant wars; some I’d grown up with and others I saw for the first time naked and ready. There was always an eagerness about them there at the end. Perhaps they knew they were destined for death. Perhaps there was a bloodlust that grew among them. But all the ‘perhaps’ in the world could not save them.

But he bid me into his tent that night, King Oropher. I still could not find my clothes, and so walked the long distance across the camp with only my scarlet boots. Few saw or cared. When I saw him I thought him a miserable man, so sure of success and yet riled enough about something to send for ‘the harlot.’ I knew that was what he called me. Many of them did. But I doubted he even knew my name. I doubted and I was right, for when his guards pulled aside the flaps of the tent and I disappeared within, feeling as though I was being swallowed alive into the yawning maw of some dark monster, he turned his bleary green eyes to me and asked, “What shall I call you?”

I gave him my name, the one I was given at birth, the one I long had answered to, growing ever more distant from my own name, hearing it bandied about in bawdy tones and hoarsely shouted in meaningless ecstasy. I gave him my name that night, knowing I was giving it away for the last time. Just as I was giving myself away for the last time, the last of myself.

And he was not kind, nor was he brutal. Only a weary indifference bound us, my body finally feeling as though its use was past its time, worn and gone. I felt nothing. Neither arousal nor pain. No enjoyment, no fulfillment, no irritation, and no sensation. I was, finally, numb.

___________________

And when he was through with me, I succumbed to true sleep, as I had not since the march began. I wondered what spell came over me, for when I finally awoke, a day had passed, and all the camp had been emptied.

I wondered if I had been left behind on purpose, undisturbed for I could not fight, or if they had merely overlooked the shadowed compartments of the King’s tent.

I did not even know in what direction they had gone. I was so lost to the horror of it that I did not even know I was naked as I sat outside the King’s tent and made a fire for myself.

There was no food, so I did not eat.

I sat there for many days. I heard the sounds of war. I could almost see it.

Then, there was the sound of riders. Thranduil came, with tears in his eyes. He saw me and ignored me. He and the small remainder of his men were battered and wounded. They moved about the camp and packed a few things into a wagon, which they hitched together, and then they slowly moved away. They moved in the direction of the main camp, that of Gil-galad.

I stayed where I was.

___________________

I knew the rest were dead.

Can you grasp it, just the smallest idea of what it means? Being a harlot, and knowing that you alone have survived all your lovers?

I could not. I was half-mad with the knowledge of it. I do not truly remember those times. Who found me. Who cared for me.

___________________

Later, I returned to the site where they had died. The battle had since moved elsewhere. I went alone. I carried a shovel.

Previously, someone had come to lie out the dead. In lines the Elves were laid, arms crossed, eyes closed. When they still had arms or eyes.

I found Silinde first, near the edge of battle. He had fought, scholar though he had been. His white hair was twisted in bloody knots. I lay over him a Greenwood standard.

As a ghost, I wandered the lines of the dead. I could name many, but there were few I was looking for. Dinilion. Lathor. Burren. I dug one grave for the three brothers. Time was short. I marked the grave with scarlet boots.

I never found Elstras’ body. But there had been no survivors from that first raid. Like the High King would be later, it seemed he had been so close to the front lines that there was nothing left to find, let alone bury.

Did I love Elstras? I was too scared to let myself know. I still don’t.

___________________

I did what I could in the camps of war. Most often, I was a water-carrier. Or stretcher-bearer. I saw the battle at times, but still I had never raised a weapon. I decided I never would.

When at last I was introduced to Elrond as ‘one of the few Mirkwood survivors’, I gave the name Erestor. He looked upon me kindly. His eyes were haunted. The war was over. It was time to rebuild. Not buildings for us, but reconstruction of a different sort. A reconstruction of the heart. He was sympathetic when he told me all my brethren had already returned to Mirkwood.

“Mirkwood?” I remember asking. “Where is that?”

Elrond and the other Elves exchanged looks. I didn’t bother to read those looks.

“Please excuse me,” he answered. “It is what we have taken to calling the Greenwood.”

“Mirkwood?” was my response. “The name well becomes it.”

“It is too dangerous to return there alone,” one of the others told me.

“I will go, then, wherever else I am welcomed.”

“Imladris has lost many,” Elrond told me.

We have all lost many, I thought, but I did not say it.

“You would be welcome there.”

“Then let me be your servant and follow where you lead.”

And I did. I latched onto the Half-Elf like he was the last light left in Arda, though with what found skill I masked every emotion that passed through me, I do not know. And he depended greatly upon me. It was the first time in a long time I shared a bed without sharing my body.

___________________

Once the ride home finally began, Elrond soon found a way to occupy himself. He was, to my hidden horror, assembling a list of the dead for his Valley. He asked me to assist. I was happy to excuse myself with a truthful excuse. “I am sorry, my Lord. I do not read.”

After all, what need had country boys for reading? Even Elstras had not known how.

Horrified at this confession, Elrond took it upon himself to teach me. That was how we spent our evenings, and along the road home he would test me as well. He taught me all the languages he knew.

___________________

Entering Imladris was like entering a new world. Though I had very much changed.

As the centuries ripened and rotted and fell away to the books of time, I made my place and kept it. People knew me as the cruel counselor. That became my name. I allowed it. I encouraged it. I had no stamina to think on the past, nor to welcome anyone into my future. I was too tired for much of it. I took what path was easiest for me.

___________________

So, you see, I lied to you, Glorfindel. “I have only ever shared my bed with books and virgin moonlight.” I suppose it is true, in some respects. The only bed I have ever had, of wooden frame and stuffed mattress, is here in Imladris.

But I had wanted you to see me as something I was not, something as pure and untouched as those cold clear winter mornings you so love. I trembled as I said it. I trembled not because I feared you but because I feared lying to you. And now it is all laid bare before you.

I cannot be what I wanted to be for you, for someone who looked upon me, who approached me, first with love and not lust. I cannot be your equal; I cannot be as an untarnished sheathe for a brilliant shining sword newly reforged from the Halls.

But this is all my life and I cannot hide it from you any longer.

___________________

And now, here I am in Imladris. Choosing to remember my childhood, if I remember anything at all. Wearing my eternal mourning robes, ever grieving for those who I recall with any fondness.

Still guarding close those memories of childhood, of the bullying in my sisters’ clothes, I rattle after the wee ones in these white halls, yelling at the top of what I know are very formidable lungs. I don’t know if they hear my words; sometimes I don’t even hear myself. I yell after them to mind themselves, to take care, to look out. As though I can yell the same thing to my childhood self.

At the same time, I am silent to all else.

And you are right. You haven’t said it, but I know you think it. ‘Why do act as you do, Erestor? So cold, so intimidating? Why push people away? You are hiding. Why are you hiding?’ I think you know the answer now.

I have had my fill of closeness. I have found that people are not to my liking. Selfish they are, as I never was. I’ve never met anyone like myself, so willing to give of themselves that they gave away everything. That is what I did, you see. I kept nothing for myself, in the end. No joy, no pleasure. No thrill or delight.

Numbness, finally, was all that I was left with, a cool replacement for the vivacity of my youth, I know. For so long I have felt as spent as the days of late autumn, when even the drooping trees are weary and the sun content to lie abed late and return undercover early. Nothing could be roused in me. There was no more joy. There was no more anything. Life was an old routine, though much changed for me. And so discouraging was I to people that they stayed away. They feared me. And I was grateful for it. Distance of any kind was welcome, and fear was close enough to respect.

So, that is who I was, and who I became. I was a summer and I became a winter, do you see? Frozen, some have called me. How apt. My body does not rouse in any way anymore. Like the rest of me, I thought it dead. Dead emotions, dead senses. Nothing.

But you see, I forgot something. For after every winter, comes a spring. And the trees that seem to die are merely hibernating. I feel, suddenly, as though I am waking, waking from this extended hibernation. I feel, suddenly, as though I might find joy again.

Not in myself, though, no, not yet. In myself there is still too little of anything.

It is in you that I find my joy. You have given to me what I only ever gave to others. Slowly, Glorfindel, you are filling me up again. I once more recognize these things I have spoken of: pleasure, delight, and joy. It is like finding some treasure that was familiar to me a long time ago. I must hold it carefully, and examine every inch of it to define it, to recognize it, and say yes, I know this. This is joy.

So too you have given me strength. Strength enough to finally recall all that I had pushed so far away from me. All that I set down before you here.

And yet, there is something else still. Among the treasures you have given me, there is something new, something unfamiliar and unremembered. Based upon what I have learned and read and heard, the name I must put to this unlooked-for treasure is love. Love grows in me. I did not wish to speak of it, as though it was so fragile the merest utterance would break it. And so I kept it secret, a slow and careful cultivation of the poor seedling. But nothing grows without light, I have learned, and love always hidden is no love at all. And, I begin to realize it is not so fragile a thing as first I thought. And though my voice would tremble, I soon shall say them. Not quite yet capable though, I shall first write them down, finding the subtler telling of the written word not quite as destructive as those that are spoken.

I want you to know that I mean each of these words in their entirety. “I” as in all of me, every part. “Love” as in the eternal kind, merry and bright and completely indefinable in these clumsy words I am so uncomfortable with. “You” as in all of you, every part.

I love you.

And this also you need to know. Though my body does not yet stir, does not yet shake the winter snow from its limbs, my heart already has warmed, and I do not think it will be long before my body longs for more than your sweet embrace and fleeting kisses.

I have chosen to give to you my secrets. I trust you will not betray them to any other, and if you do, it is my own fault for so harshly misjudging you. As for me, I must have time alone. Is it a test? I think it is. Not for you, you must know, but for me. To think more deeply than I have yet dared to think, to dream more soundly than I have ever hoped, and to feel more keenly than I have ever dared to feel.

Time I have taken for myself and time I give to you. Think, if you will, dream if you dare, or feel if you must. Perhaps your needs are other. Perhaps you have come to hate me for these secrets or perhaps you long already to have me back. I ask only that you use this time wisely, and regard these secrets selfishly, for they belong only to you.

And when I return, then we both shall discover what each of us has made with our time. If my voice has grown strong enough to utter the word of love, or if your heart has turned away from me.

With love,  
Your Erestor  
If you will have me  
Still waiting for Someday


	4. Secrets 2

Glorfindel breathed.

Then he, very carefully, trembling as he did so, closed the tear-spattered papers. He set the book aside. He stood up, pushed in his chair, stepped back from the desk, and breathed.

“Damn him! Damn him damn him damn him! Dammit Erestor! Damn damn DAMN!” He ran to the window and threw it open to the spring day. “ERESTOR,” he shouted, loud enough to throw the birds from their perches, to turn the heads of those guarding the border; his voice echoed in the Valley like a godly thunder. “Erestor! Get back here right now! Come home at once! If you can hear me, then turn around right now and come back to me! Erestor! I love you! DAMN YOU, COME BACK!”

The squirrels chattered angrily, the maidens tittered in the gardens and Elrond, somewhere in the Valley, shook his head in bemused consternation.

But there was no returning cry. And there was no returning Counselor.

= = = = =

Glorfindel spent the next days in an uproar. He spoke with Elrond, won a temporary sabbatical from all duties, acquired the room next to his own chambers, was granted a sum of goods and money, and was given a troupe of three Elves who agreed to do whatever he asked of them for a month.

He took these three Elves under his wing: young they were and eager to achieve much in the Valley. One was a craftsman whose trade was that of a woodcarver, the next was a librarian newly migrated from the Harbors, and the last was one of Glorfindel’s own warriors, but a novice in comparison to himself. He took them aside and told them, “I am in love with Erestor, and he is in love with me, and now that he is gone, I wish to prepare a surprise for him, do you see? All right, come with me, my cronies, my eager minions, and bring with you your paper and ink and write down all that I say, for I don’t want a single thing forgotten.”

In this way, Glorfindel amused himself. He kept busy, he made what he thought was the best possible use of his time. And so trusting were his three henchmen that they kept every secret he gave them, enthused in their labor and excited at the chance to work with a suddenly completely eccentric reborn hero, for the fallen warrior of Gondolin is what everyone said Glorfindel was, even if he never said it himself.

= = = = =

In the depths of the Golden Wood, Erestor wandered. Alone he wandered, and full of deep thought. Any who saw him would turn to those beside them and say, ‘Do you see that Elf? What shadow weighs so upon him that he appears caught in it, even in the midst of our Lothlorien?’ And if an Imladris Elf overheard, he would answer, ‘That, that is the Counselor Erestor. Long has he haunted our own halls, devoid of cheer and light. And why he has come here I do not know, but that a change has overcome him in these passing years and it is said the Golden Wood is a timeless place. If it is time he seeks, then he has found it here.’

And just as in Imladris, those who saw Erestor let him be and did not disrupt his solitary ruminations.

But in the end, as the months fell swiftly down the tunnel of time and his return to Imladris drew near, Erestor did something he had never in his life done before. He sought advice.

One night after a feast shared between the people of Lothlorien and the visitors from Imladris, Erestor approached the queen who did not claim such a title and asked to speak with her. Galadriel, dressed all in white and pearls and the delicate blue of sea foam, rose elegantly from her chair, bid her husband farewell, and clasped Erestor’s elbow, asking him to lead.

Now, Erestor was not easily intimidated, but when in the company of this witch, he could not hide his awe. Galadriel was indefinable, at some moments a maiden, at others a wisewoman. She was bright as molten gold and yet seemed to cast a dark shadow. She was beautiful and, somehow, horrid. He could not stand her, but longed to stand near her. She was taller than he was too, which was upsetting for some reason, even though many people were taller than he.

He walked with her along the swinging bridges high above the ground until they reached some unnamed talan, merely a crossroads of the high city that branched throughout the mellyrn, a silver-roped roadway.

The talan was large, and circled round the trunk of the tall tree, with curving banisters all about and various stairs and bridges leading off it. It was a good place. A few white lanterns hung like dripping icicles from the branches above, and there were no people within sight.

Galadriel finally let go his arm and she needlessly rested her hands upon the white railing, looking out over the Wood. “What do you seek from me, Counselor?”

Her voice, too, seemed to hide some magic in it, as though there were nothing normal about her, as though only the heavenly and miraculous resided in or near her. Finally, Erestor answered, “I am not sure, my Lady. I seek counsel, but I myself am uncertain what nature that counsel should take. My secrets might be known to you, for you see much, or I may be a mystery to you, as I am to many. I do not know. But I feel obliged to admit that my visit here had a basely selfish purpose. I have come here in cowardly flight from the man whom I love. I do not know if I have the strength to seek what I desire, or the ability, even, to love him as I wish to do. I have come here to think over the whole of my life, and to wonder at my future. In my wonderings, I have grown sure of a love I was previously too weak even to speak of.” Throughout his speech, Erestor dared not look to her, for her starry eyes -- he knew -- would have stilled his tongue, so full of knowledge and time were they. “What I expect or hope from you, I suppose even I do not know. I have thought too much it seems, and have overwhelmed myself with questions no one has answers to.”

“Love always offers more questions than answers. Do you not know this, Erestor of the Greenwood?” He looked up with shock at her words. “Aye, I know more of you than you think, Counselor. And as for counsel, I may offer you this: Trust to love, to your heart and his. Do not think overmuch. Also, relationships -- of any kind -- are a two-way affair: there must be give and take for both parties, forfeits yes, and triumphs. You have already given much, however. Now is your time to receive.”

“I don’t know that I completely understand,” Erestor confessed. “But still your words calm me, and I shall remember them.”

“That is well, Erestor. Now, the night is far gone and I seek my own bed. Do not be too long in seeking yours.”

“Yes, my Lady.”

And she was gone.  
 And Erestor, Erestor returned to his guest quarters to pack his things. They would be leaving soon, he knew, and now he looked forward to his return.


	5. Someday

Erestor, so long used to hiding what had -- admittedly -- been fairly dull and depthless emotions in previous years, could not mask the very real anxiety that radiated from him the closer they rode to home. Of all the Elves who made up the escort, none dared discuss or even mention the changes that had overcome Erestor in recent years. Accustomed as the Elves of Imladris were to Erestor’s foul moods and cold manners, they easily did as they had always done. They ignored him.

But also riding tall and proud in the escort was Elrond’s daughter. The Evenstar rode her white mare beside Erestor who was mounted on a chestnut stallion, and she alone braved the possibility of cruel retorts and evil glares. She watched him with a calm sweetness inherited from her mother’s mother, all subtle smiles and knowing looks.

It was hard to miss the fact that, as the troupe came within sight of the gates, Erestor was downright jittery with nervousness. Finally, Arwen could remain silent no longer. She guided her mount directly alongside Erestor, who had -- with much disgruntled impatience and indecipherable grumbling -- taught her to read and write so very long ago, along with other proper skills for young ladies and lords to be tutored in. Since then, she had maintained her distance from him, as most people did. But like most who at least associated with him at meals, she had noticed his metamorphosis. And she approached him now to speak. “My dear Counselor, you’re unsettling your horse.”

Shocked to find the young lady so close, Erestor started, but then took her words to heart and took a moment to calm his mount, fondly patting the beast’s great neck. “You are right.”

In an effort to prevent eavesdropping, Arwen leaned in to whisper, “What’s come over you, Counselor Erestor, to so alter you these last years?”

Erestor offered a shaky smile and Arwen raised her eyebrows, in an expression all too reminiscent of her father. She’d never seen anything happy or uncertain in Erestor’s face, but both were there now. Erestor also leant in and whispered back. “I doubt you are the first to see it, but you are certainly the first brave enough to say anything. Even your father has avoiding speaking of this ‘alteration’ as you so delicately put it.”

“And?” she asked, with a girlish grin.

“It is the one thing that changes all who experience it.”

Arwen shook her head, not understanding.

Erestor lowered his voice even more, pitched it so only the lady might hear. “I am in love.”

Arwen’s delicate hand clapped over her mouth in astonishment and dark eyes went wide as saucers. She glanced about as though to see if anyone else had heard, but the Elves of their escort were all firmly engaged in watching the surrounding woodland shadows or giddy with anticipation of returning home, which was now in sight. Arwen tittered a moment, staggered at the mere thought of Erestor being in love with anyone, at being susceptible to those more tender emotions that surely swayed every Elf at times. Until this moment, she just could never have conceived of it.

Despite her lack of a verbal answer, Erestor continued. “I may confide in you, yes? Glorfindel has told me he loves me. I may have panicked a bit when I finally decided I returned the sentiment. I left him a note before I ran away to the Golden Wood with you. . . . I can’t imagine he is very pleased with me . . .”

“Oh Erestor,” Arwen cooed in a sympathetic voice. “I had no idea.”

“No one does.” Except Galadriel of course, but he didn’t say that.

He turned fearful eyes to her, and she read more emotion there in that one look than in all the expressions she had ever seen him wear altogether. And when he tempered his pretty voice to her ear, it was desperate with desire to know, “Do you think he will be angry?”

And even with her lack of knowledge in the subject, she answered to the best of her ability. “Oh Erestor, may I call you that? Erestor, even if he is angry with you, if he loves you, he will forgive you, I am sure. Glorfindel is not one to hold grudges or keep any hatred in his heart.”

“May your words strengthen me,” Erestor seemed to pray.

And then no more words passed between them, for the gates loomed near, and a party of Elves waited within the forecourt to greet them.

= = = = =

Glorfindel had been careful in his manner of dress. His hair, his secret vanity, was brushed free and loose as he never wore it in public. An uncommon idea nowadays, he had been raised to believe that hair untempered by braids was not a sight fit for public viewing; it was not proper. But he wore it thusly now. Perhaps even he was not certain why he found it fitting. Perhaps it was merely the imagery of displaying what was -- to him -- a symbol of the bedroom to publicly greet his lover.

The outfit he wore was newly commissioned: all shades of blue, from the most delicate pale icy cerulean in the lace at his collar and cuffs to the deepest, richest cornflower of his leggings. A bright sky blue doublet embroidered with coils of gold and sewn with sapphire jewels was the crowning grace of the ensemble accented by navy velvet boots and a braided belt of softest leather dyed the color of rainbow’s indigo. He wore a mithril ring twisted with silver and set with a blue stone on his left forefinger.

He cut a dashing figure to say the least. Among all the Elves in the court, he shone the brightest by far and many interested glances were cast his way. Elrond only stared in inquiring perplexity.

Glorfindel regarded none of them. As they all waited in the courtyard of white and gray stone with trees rising majestically above them and the wind softly blowing, Glorfindel only had eyes and ears for his three henchmen, who had grown as attached as puppies to a master. As the greeting party waited, these three Elves stood in a line beside Glorfindel, and what a line it was. First stood the young craftsman, by name of Saelbeth, dressed all in tones of violet, in delicate shoes like lilac and a costume of heavy, swooping sleeves like the soft iridescent underbelly of curving sea shells. He wore dark leggings the color of violets and purple ribbons in soft yellow hair. Next the librarian stood in line, by name of Melpomaen. His small, dark figure was draped in proper robes, but all in the colors of red, from crimson lining to an almost plum velvet surcoat lined in gold buttons. Currant-colored ribbons bound his ebony hair and a thin fillet of filigreed gold sat upon his brow. Last but not least came the young warrior, by name of Dinendal, clothed all in shades of green from boots of suede and linen breeches to shirt of silk, and ribbons in auburn hair; he was decked out in evergreen and paling lime and forest tones of jade and emerald.

With secretive smiles on each and every face, they awaited the slowly approaching escort.

Then they all filed in, guards and diplomats warmly greeted by friends and family, Arwen by her father, and last to dismount, Erestor. He left his horse, reins drooping to the ground, staring disconsolately after him.

Erestor was frightened. He simply did not know what to expect. And there stood Glorfindel, with the most colorful trio behind him. But Glorfindel himself, oh how magnificent! As though a god of the sky stood before him, manifested in velvet and gold and satin and lace and glorious flesh! How intimidating, how beautiful, Erestor barely found the strength to edge near. Erestor, in plain brown traveling clothes stained with the muck and mire of the road, seeming so small and completely unappealing. And some part of him was acutely aware of the many eyes on them, even as he fearfully approached the figure drenched in blue.

Glorfindel’s expression remained firmly unreadable. Neither smile nor frown tempted the wide mouth. Eyes were clear and blank. And still Erestor came near. Knowing not what else to do, Erestor performed a little bow; it seemed appropriate in light of such a presence. He ignored the three curious youths in a line behind Glorfindel. And Erestor licked his lips, his dark eyes glancing aside and darting up to resolute blue. His words came slow and his voice stuttered, “I can understand if you are cross with me . . .”

Then, Glorfindel sort of . . . swooped. In a predatory lunge, he shot out to wrap iron-strong arms around Erestor’s slim figure. He lifted Erestor into the air and spun him about. When Glorfindel finally set him down, he still would not release him. “Cross??!?!?” he belted out, loud in Erestor’s ear. “Nay!!! FURIOUS I was, furious that you had left me! You coward! And, so, well, what did you unravel in your thinkings?” He pushed Erestor away so that strong hands on weak shoulders dictated the distance between them. He looked Erestor firmly in the eyes, he madly looked, blue eyes suddenly deep with love and worry and frenzied devotion. “Anything of note?”

Erestor glanced wildly about. “Nothing for public consumption, really, Glorfindel.”

“TOO BAD!!!!” Glorfindel howled. He seemed quite mad, and he just did not care that there was, indeed, an incredibly amused and curious public to witness them. He embraced Erestor again. “Erestor! You . . .” It seemed he was going to swear. Erestor was stiff as a board in his arms, as though fearful of physical attack. “I love you, every last part of you, I love everything you are and were, I love your heart.” Glorfindel pulled back again and hunched over to kiss Erestor’s tunic where it lay over his heart. “Your mind.” He kissed Erestor’s brow. “Your soul.” He took Erestor’s hand in his own and brought it up to lay a kiss on the inside of his pale pulsing wrist. “And your body.” And kissed Erestor full on the lips, soundly and without reserve, with much tongue and mashing of lips. He practically bent the other Elf over backwards, staking his physical claim.

Arwen and Elrond raised their eyebrows in a similar expression. The Elves in the guard stared in shock, and Glorfindel’s three henchmen shared happy, anticipatory smiles.

Glorfindel pulled back and the two Elves stared at one another as though surprised. They both were shaken. But then Glorfindel’s mad sanity returned. He held Erestor at arm’s length again and cried, “And dammit all, Erestor, you’ve already told me, and if you never voice it, I don’t care, and if you’ve changed your mind that’s just too bad, because I love you, now, always, and forever. I love you and you’ll never be rid of me.”

Then, it seemed as though his steam finally wore off. Glorfindel seemed to deflate. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against Erestor’s. He continued, ending in a whisper, “ I am not cross, Erestor, not furious. No never, not with you. And if you can wait, if you can hold off your bathing and eating for just a little while, there is something I’d like to show you.”

“I will go with you,” Erestor readily answered, though still unprepared to deal with an out-of-character Glorfindel, so at ease in his sudden madness.

“Oh but first!” Glorfindel declared, stepping up to stand side-by-side with Erestor, and hand-in-hand, “Let me introduce my helpers. Of course you know Melpomaen, and these are Saelbeth, a craftsman who lives outside the House, and Dinendal, one of my up and coming guardsmen.”

Erestor nodded in turn to each young Elf, who offered salutations and welcome and secretive, knowing smiles.

Glorfindel told them, “Run ahead now and prepare things!”

And off they went, scurrying into the house.

Glorfindel took Erestor’s arm gently and crooked it into his own and led him toward the House. He turned his head to whisper near Erestor’s ear, mindful now of keeping down his voice, seeming to have already forgotten his antics in the square. “My dearest friend,” he said, so easily and lovingly, with a longing in his speech, “I’ve taken the liberty of preparing for you a gift. I trust, from the tone of your letter to me, and from your passive acceptance of me today, that your feelings have not changed? Have continued, even, to grow?”

Erestor glanced shyly into kind, blue eyes no longer glaring with near hostile intensity, but only soft and wise, as they ever had been. “That is right,” he agreed, all the old harshness of his voice tempered by these new feelings arisen in him.

“Good, that is well,” Glorfindel answered happily at once. “And I must also say that your letter touched me in many ways, but never did I waver in my love for you, and so devastated was I that you had fled that I might admit to a slight case of psychosis.”

“For this lunacy that has possessed you, and for any suffering I may have caused you, I am sorry. But I needed my own time away to think. I oftentimes think too much, maybe as a replacement for feeling. I’ve been . . . adjusting. And being around you, it would have been too distracting. Too complicated.”

Glorfindel smiled. “I understand.” He really did. “I’m just glad to have you back. I did miss you.”

= = = = =

Erestor could not help but notice that everyone was staring at them as they walked the hall arm in arm. “Glorfindel . . . what did you do?”

Glorfindel guiltily rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I DID go a little . . . insane. As soon as I read your letter, I may have made a slight confession to the whole of Imladris.”

Squeezing shut his eyes, Erestor sighed and bowed his head. “You MAY have? Really? Well, I’m glad I was not here to witness your foolishness, Glorfindel.”

Glorfindel blushed and laughed.

Finally, Glorfindel led them to his chambers and then halted. Listening carefully, faint scufflings and whisperings could be heard. Erestor canted his head and eyed the white carven door with narrowed brows. “What have you done?” he asked curiously.

“A little remodeling,” was Glorfindel’s answer. Unspeakably excited, he clasped his hands behind his back and rocked forward on the balls of his feet. “They’re almost done. Just wait and you’ll see!”

Sure enough, the trio of brightly colored Elves emerged from the room a few minutes later, each bowing at the pair as they passed, smirks firmly in place. The scent of some spicy incense followed in their wake. Glorfindel nodded his thanks to them and then turned to Erestor. “Ready?”

“And willing,” Erestor answered, waiting for Glorfindel to open the door.

Which he did. He pushed the white door so that it swung inward and bowed Erestor through.

Erestor let out a slight gasp. Much was changed within the single room that made up Glorfindel’s quarters. In fact, all that remained the same was the positioning of the bed relative to the fireplace, which stood black and empty in these warmer seasons.

He stepped within, carefully looking everything over. What had been a ramshackle collection of a disorganized warrior’s life in all manner of disarray had become a cool and organized room, in shades of blue and white. Gone was the dark mahogany armoire that had loomed in the corner. In its place stood two identical wardrobes, stained with that incredible Imladrian white that could be found in so much of the Valley’s woodwork, and the doors of the wardrobes were skillfully carved in subtle scenes of snow-washed winter in the Valley. Erestor approached to curiously run his fingers over the shaped wood. “Saelbeth’s work?”

“Aye.”

“There are two.”

“One of them is mine,” Glorfindel agreed, stepping forward to open the other wardrobe, revealing his collection of clothes neatly displayed. “They other is empty.” His meaning was clear. He licked his lips and looked plainly at Erestor. “You don’t have to use it, but I thought maybe you wanted to keep a few things here, so you have something to change into in the morning.” He shut the door and backed away and looked then to the floor.  
 Erestor made no reply, still overwhelmed at the look of the room. He turned his attention elsewhere, taking in the heavy blue bed curtains and matching drapes. Blue cushions embroidered with silver thread had been bestowed upon the window seats. Plain wooden chairs, the sort that Erestor favored, had replaced the monstrous seats upholstered in fading red that had so long lived there. Glorfindel had switched the place of his oak vanity and maple desk so that the latter now sat nearer the window, where there would be more light. A new array of shelves were spaced evenly along the walls, housing Glorfindel’s small collections of not only books but also games and a few bottles of wine, as well as the many books and small personal things that had some how migrated from Erestor’s room to Glorfindel’s.

Erestor walked the soft blue carpets in what small floor space was left in what was already a fairly undersized room, examining everything. Finally, he noticed something. “Snowflakes!” Erestor exclaimed, holding up a small inkbottle that was green glass set with a design of pewter snowflakes. His dark eyes lit up with joy. There were snowflakes subtly embedded throughout the room, sparkling in the blue cushions, hiding along the carved edge of the bookcase, shadowed in pattern on the rug. Even in the old woodwork of desk and vanity, they appeared. Plain brass handles had been replaced with silver drawer pulls, which Erestor finally saw were indeed six-pointed and delightfully reminiscent of snow.

“I didn’t want it to be too overstated,” Glorfindel said, somewhat sheepishly.

But before he could say a single thing more, Erestor finally noticed the most drastic addition to the chamber. “Glorfindel. Why is there a door in your room?”

Where once had been flat wall now housed a door. Granted, it blended in with the rest of the lightly colored room and was not designed to draw the eye. Its silver handle was, unmistakably, shaped in the likeness of a snowflake.

And Glorfindel answered the question. “There is a door in my room, because my room is now . . . two rooms.”

Erestor eyed the threshold warily, as though the closed door might hold something evil behind its innocent appearance. “That was a guest chamber.”

Glorfindel shook his head. “Not anymore.”

“This isn’t your room, is it?” Erestor asked, looking steadfastly at the white paneled door. “These are our rooms.”

“Only if you wish it,” Glorfindel readily answered. “Only if you’re ready. After all, you still have your own . . .”

“My own space for thinking?” Erestor questioned with a smile, looking at Glorfindel again.

Glorfindel shrugged.

“I don’t know that I’ll need it anymore,” Erestor told him boldly, then approached the secret door to open it. Those dark eyes darted about and the smile slowly melted from his face. Not in disappointment or alarm, but only in shock. He moved within.

This room was easily twice as big. It was a corner room, with windows on two walls and a balcony as well. Between warmly hued rugs the wooden floor was revealed, pale oak planking, warm in the light from what was conceivably a few hundred candles, no doubt only just lit by Glorfindel’s ambitious minions. Candles filled the warm room in warm colors, the yellow light flickering and cheerful and accompanied by a subtle incense smoking from large brass braziers. The room itself was done up in light greens with touches of peach and red. The bed in this room, for example, was very . . . red. There was no other word for it. And big. The bed was decidedly very big.

The wide windows were draped in flowing gauze of peach and lemon, like spring flowers blooming from the pale green of the walls. Potted plants grew in the corners and hung from high shelves. The fireplace here was again much larger than the other, and painstakingly carved of dark mahogany in the likeness of great growing things. Not flowers nor viney décor as was common among Elven architecture, but great growing stalks of some crop. A great many pillows, cushions, and blankets were laid out around the hearthrug, so that one might make a nest there.

Then he saw the mural. Along one side of the wall that housed the door to the hall was a stretch of plain wall, painted in brilliant colors, a landscape of rolling hills and sprouting trees with a great blue sky above, and a plain dirt road disappearing over the hills.

Erestor ran toward it, dirty shoes skipping across the rug-scattered floor. He stopped short but a few feet from the wall, reaching out to almost -- but not quite -- let his fingers dance over it. “It’s home,” he whispered in a voice wet with tears. He turned with shining eyes to face Glorfindel, who had taken a few steps within. “Who painted it?”

“Saelbeth’s grandfather. You know him; he works with the carpenters. He, too, remembers the time when the name of the Greenwood was an apt one.”

“This is the very road! The very road,” Erestor exclaimed, pointing, “that led down to my house! You can see where the corn grows in the distance! I walked this road! I knew it!”

Glorfindel admitted, “When he asked me which fields to paint, I just told him to choose, ‘the road that led to the corn and rice.’ He remembered it.”

Erestor nodded, looking again upon the mural. “I did not know him then. Though I may have seen him at market once or twice.” Erestor thought long and hard before voicing his next thought, “People who knew me then tend not to recognize me now.”

“Lack of joy changes a person,” Glorfindel told him.

Erestor turned to regard him again. “I suppose it does.”

For a moment, then, they looked at one another. And when their thoughts began to show, they looked away and stood in silence. Erestor’s eye then caught upon a low dresser with wide drawers beside the bed. “What is here?”

Glorfindel followed to watch as Erestor pulled open the top drawer. “Oh, all sorts of things,” he said in a voice that was not quite innocent.

“Glorfindel,” Erestor’s voice was all seriousness. He had removed from a great pile of them one of the Imladris bathing tokens for the Bath House, painted one of six colors on one side and engraved with a rune or two on the other. They were flat and round and just smaller than the size of Erestor’s palm. “These are for special services. Expensive oils and steams and the private rooms.” He looked up at Glorfindel. Around at the room. “Where did all this come from?”

Glorfindel shrugged. “I called in a few favors.”

“A few?”

“My cronies helped.”

“You didn’t have them steal, did you?”

Glorfindel laughed and smiled kindly down at a firmly glowering Erestor, who was kneeling before the dresser. “You know me better than that.”

Erestor agreed with a nod and a tight smile. “Still, all of this . . .”

“It was worth it,” Glorfindel told him as Erestor replaced the bathing token and closed the first drawer to open the second. Which was filled with a variety of bottles stacked in their own little wooden or velvet compartments.

Raising an eyebrow, Erestor commented, “Never have I seen such a wide array of oils.”

Curious, he quickly shut the drawer and moved to the last.

Glorfindel suddenly stood beside him, hovering. “Oh, you don’t want to look in that drawer.” He seemed quite certain of it, and even reached as if to pull Erestor away.

“Don’t I?” Erestor answered, pulling it open in any case. A blushing smile grew upon his previously ashen face. “Why Glorfindel, I had not realized your tastes were so varied. Your selection of toys is impressive.”

“Well, I don’t really . . . I’ve never . . . I had some help, assembling this . . . collection.”

Erestor looked up. Glorfindel was blushing a far deeper shade of red than Erestor himself. Erestor shut the drawer and stood to look up at Glorfindel and tell him, “Wouldn’t I have loved to eavesdrop on that conversation.”

Glorfindel giggled anxiously and again made that nervous gesture, rubbing the back of his neck, as if he had nothing else to do with his hands. “Yeah . . .”

Shaking his head in bewilderment, Erestor looked about the place again. He noticed something new every time he did. This time it was the brass chandelier that hung from the center of the ceiling and could be lowered with a golden rope run through a pulley system and tied off at chest level beside the door that led to the first room. “What is all this, Glorfindel?”

Glorfindel did not answer until Erestor turned to face him. “I had told you: my bed, the one in the other room, that bed is for sleeping. That is all it ever will be for. I never want you to feel . . . obligated or pressured. As long as we are there, you are safe. Safe from intimacy, from physicality, even from love if you wish it. That room, that room is our winter. It is for hibernation, for resting, for breathing deep and slow and easy. But this room, this room is our summer. It is for . . . everything else. If you want it to be. If you wish, we will lock this room until you feel comfortable here, or we can lock it away forever. But, you said, in your letter to me, that your body was only . . . resting. Waiting for summer. When that spring awakening comes, we have a room to be comfortable in.” Glorfindel sighed and looked then to the floor. “That was a lot less eloquent than I imagined it.”

Erestor took Glorfindel’s biceps in the gentlest of holds, moving close and looking up into worried blue eyes. “It was perfect. And you, Glorfindel . . .” Erestor savored the name as it rolled through his mouth, “you asked me about my thinkings, my conclusions. Four months ago I wrote it and you read it, and I discovered that I am quite strong enough now to say it: I love you.” He then tugged on a strand of that magnificent golden hair to bring Glorfindel’s head down for a kiss, slow burning and sweet.

“Mm,” Erestor purred as he pulled away, eyes closed and face drawn in smooth lines of contentment. “Thank you for these rooms. A Winter and a Summer.” Then, he looked with dark pools of love into Glorfindel’s calm face. “I hate to think I’m so divided.” He laughed. “But I like this place.”

Glorfindel smiled. “I’m glad. And, uh, I have something else to show you.” He took Erestor’s hand and led him back into the Winter Room, to stand beside the cold hearth.

They stood facing one another, in the path of golden light from the candles in the Summer Room.

“In your letter,” Glorfindel nervously began, “you were very careful, Erestor, to leave out any names of note. Your mother’s, your sisters’, your niece’s. Your own. Despite this,” Glorfindel said with an unsure smile, “I sent out some letters to Mirkwood and guess what?”

Erestor was motionless, not knowing what to think. He gave no answer.

Glorfindel reached out to retrieve several papers from behind a vase on the mantle. “You were gone quite a long time.”

“Four months,” Erestor agreed.

“Aye. Plenty of time for an ambitious messenger to seek out the caves of Mirkwood and return.” He rifled through to pick out a sealed parchment. “There’s a letter here from your sister.”

Erestor suddenly paled. He regarded the plain envelope as one might eye a riled snake, uncertain if it would bite.

Glorfindel replaced the other papers on the mantle and looked down upon the note in his hand. “I know not what words are here, nor what the tone might be. I can understand if you do not wish to read it. The unknown is often--”

“Will you open it?” Erestor quietly interrupted, his voice hitched with fear. “Will you read it to me?”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” the golden Elf readily agreed, breaking the wax seal and unfolding what turned out to be two sheets of thick paper. Blue eyes searched the heading and he suddenly smiled. “It begins, ‘My Brother!’”

“Read it.”

“Yes.” Glorfindel read.

~*~*~*~*~*~

My Brother,

Glorfindel’s enquiries came to us quite unexpectedly. My hand shakes so badly, I’ve had to rewrite my reply, my correspondence to you, four times now. Oh my dear, we’ve counted you so long among the dead that the mere thought of you reading this now is enough to move me to tears.

I gather that you have much changed. I believe we all have. Glorfindel’s letter brought to mind my life on the old farm; I had not thought on those days in such a long time, but I am glad I was reminded of them.

And I am glad I was reminded of you. I understand you are the Chief Counselor Erestor in faraway Imladris. I can say I have heard of you, I have heard many things of you, and none of them match up to my memories of my little brother running about in my old frocks, nor the youth I cleaned up after his first fistfight, nor the man who sheltered with me in the mysterious caves I now call home.

Too long had we been parted, by too many things. I do not wish to speak of them now.

I wish to speak of my life and of yours. I wish you well, I wish you all the blessings you once bestowed upon me, and my husband and little Cellel.

Cellel, of course, is a grown woman now, and you’ve never seen such a beautiful young lady. Though barely six hundred years my junior, I shall ever call her young. Despite the delight she takes in life, she is of a fickle heart and has not yet settled with a man. She earns her place here by toiling in the gardens. She is the only woman to do so, as the garden area has been host to three spider invasions in the years since it was constructed, but she refuses to part with her work there. As so many find to be true, she cannot live long without the light of the sun, else her soul dims and she begins to pine. And so the gardens keep her vivacious and young, it seems, and I am glad of it.

When I told Cellel of your survival, she burst into a fit of tears and demanded at once to join the next party leaving for Imladris so that she might come visit. I explained that she could not just drop herself on your doorstep, no matter you’re her uncle. She agreed, but her determination may yet sneak her out of the caves and to your side, whether I will it or no.

If this is the case, you may expect a lovely lady of long silver hair and with a bright green cape clasped with a silver buckle in the shape of a rose to come clattering through the halls of your House any time now. She will not have changed much from the last time you saw her, really. She knows to call you by your preferred name now, but she is a passionate girl and may forget. For that, I apologize.

She told me, after her tears had dried, in a quiet voice (rare for her) that she remembered holding tight to you after her mother died. She remembered always taking joy in the sight of you in the caves before you left. That your joy added to hers and that though she pretended to resent it when you ruffled her hair when passing in the halls, that she truly enjoyed the attention.

As for myself, Caranir and I work side-by-side in the new mill. Long did we work to shape the caves, but we have always been happy, for we have always been together. What grace kept him at my side during the War I do not know, but I am grateful for it.

Please, Erestor, be not long in replying. I must know all that has happened in the long centuries that have parted us.

With love,  
Dondeild

~*~*~*~*~*~

Erestor was weeping, great wailing sobs. He had backed up to sit upon the blue bedspread and his arms hung weak and limp at his sides. Glorfindel set aside the letter and slowly moved to sit beside him on the bed. Erestor turned to him and cried with great gasping sobs into Glorfindel’s shoulder. “I’m” *gasp* “so” *heave* “happy-y-y-yyyy!”

= = = = =

After Erestor cried himself to a restful sleep, Glorfindel escaped into the Summer Room to douse all the candles and put out the incense. He collected a token at random from their drawer and when he left, closed the door behind him.

He let Erestor sleep until the majority of the House had sought their dinner. Then, he roused the sleeper and Glorfindel led him by the hand through corridors lit by the last of the day’s light.

The Bath House was an extension of the main House and could be reached without leaving the safety of a roof, particularly handy on those rainy days. Glorfindel led the silent Erestor through the hall, down a staircase, round a tower, and through the wide-open double doors to the Bath House.

Glorfindel presented his token to the bored attendant, a young maiden, still a girl really with curly black hair and rosy cheeks, who was thrilled at the opportunity to actually do something. She hopped to her feet, glanced at the rune and the color -- dropping it into one of many tubes that would fall down to the boiler room where more people would be working to run the pumps -- and smiled brilliantly at them as she sorted through the keys at her waist. “Follow me sirs!”

Erestor remained silent and rather pliant, following wherever Glorfindel led him.

They walked past the community pools and individual tubs, loosing steam this time of day, and down a torch-lit stone corridor. They were underground now, as the valley went slightly uphill. The waterfall beside the building would be turning a wheel to power the pumps. But it was not audible through the thick stone.

The attendant pushed open the oak door, which would have been heavy if not for being so well balanced on its sturdy iron hinges. Glorfindel and Erestor followed her in and sat upon the wooden benches as she pulled down the wooden ramp that the heated water would flow down. She made sure that robes and towels were laid out in their proper places. Once the water started flowing, she sniffed it to make sure it was the scent that had been recorded on the token, not that Glorfindel cared one way or another, and Erestor was practically catatonic.

She flashed a smile at them then, and said, “If you leave your clothes in the basket, they’ll be cared for.”

Glorfindel smiled his thanks and when the door finally clicked closed with a final thud, he sighed out a deep breath of relief. “All right, Erestor.” He climbed to his feet and held out his hand. “Up to your feet, my friend.”

Erestor took the hand and slowly stood. It seemed he was looking at Glorfindel’s chest, but he was more likely glazed with a trance-like sleep still, though obviously responding to Glorfindel’s auditory output. “You gonna get undressed?” the golden Elf asked with gentle sarcasm.

Erestor shrugged.

Glorfindel tenderly stripped him of the traveling clothes stained with mud from the roads. He set aside the shoes and threw the garments in the woven basket that waited. Then, he guided the naked Elf over to the deep, circular pool.

Erestor wakened a bit as he stepped into the heated water, the scent of lavender and something else, almost like vanilla but subtler, rising from the steaming surface. He relaxed with a low, crooning moan and sunk into the water that was still falling from the wooden ramp with little bubbles.

Glorfindel waited until the bath had filled and the water ceased. He tugged the string that pulled the ramp away and then sat on the floor behind Erestor where he sat in the sunken stone tub. He reached out to unbind Erestor’s braids and run his fingers through. “You’ve had quite a day, Erestor. You must be tired.”

“Mm-hmm,” Erestor rumbled, leaning back.

Glorfindel massaged the soaped water into Erestor’s mass of black hair. “I’m glad to have you back.”

Erestor mumbled something that could have been, ‘me too.’

“If you like, I could give you a massage before bed?”

“S’nds nice,” Erestor drawled.

“Are you gonna eat tonight? Or can you do without?”

“Glorfindel?”

“What?”

“Are you getting in here with me or not?”

Glorfindel pulled his hands away and looked at the back of Erestor’s head. “Do you want me to?”

For a moment, there was no reaction, and Glorfindel could imagine Erestor rolling his big brown eyes. “Of course.”

Glorfindel stood. “All right.” He removed the braided leather belt and carefully undid the many buttons of antler that did up the front of his bright doublet. Soon his clothes, nowhere near dirty, were neatly folded on one of the wooden benches, soft boots sitting crumpled together underneath like a pair of blue lop-eared rabbits.

Glorfindel came round to slip swiftly into the steaming water, humming with satisfaction at the wet heat that soothed nerve-tightened muscles. But he was not fast enough for Erestor’s quick eyes, which caught the sight of his arousal. Those eyes, long shadowed with darkness to an inky black, were now very clearly a deep brown, and they sparkled in the lantern light. “So,” Erestor’s sleepy voice rumbled, “have you been wondering about my body?”

“Wha – what?”

Erestor chuckled easily. “Your eyes get so big when you’re shocked. It’s cute.”

“Oh, but, what?”

“So hopelessly confused,” Erestor observed with a giddy laugh. He peered into astonished blue eyes. “What I’ve come to think of as my re-awakening. I know I feel it coming. Soon now, Glorfindel, I’ll wish to show my love for you in physical terms.” He peered through the water in the direction of Glorfindel’s groin. “Very physical terms.” He looked up again at Glorfindel’s face, his brown eyes a skillful mask of innocent curiosity. “If that’s okay with you.”

Glorfindel’s arms had been spread out along the round rim of the sunken tub, and he fought to keep them there, lest he draw attention to what he wished to cover. “Erestor,” he nervously laughed. “I’ve wanted you for a long time. I look forward to any way in which you’d care to express this love.”

The predatory gleam in Erestor’s eyes dulled to something more tender. Then he reached out across the distance to touch the ring on Glorfindel’s index finger. His voice was lazy. “I’ve never seen this before.”

Glorfindel pulled back his hand to fondly examine the sapphire embedded in twisted silver. “It was a well-wishing gift from my little helpers. They banded together to get it for me in anticipation of my happiness.”

“Saelbeth, Melpomaen, and Dinendal. What a troupe. They’ve come to truly care for you, it seems. It looks as though they had a great deal of fun working together.”

“You’ve no idea.” He sighed and then chuckled. “Now I fear I’ll never be rid of them!”

Then they sat, quiet and lazy in the steaming water. Erestor dipped his head back into the water and ran his fingers through until the strands were straight and slick. He used a rough cloth that had sat neatly folded on the rim of the tub to scrub every inch of his travel-weary body. Glorfindel watched in silence. When Erestor finished, he mirrored Glorfindel’s pose, sitting opposite the warrior and stretching lean arms out along the edge. When he spoke, it was to voice his rambling thoughts. “I must make reply to my sister. I hardly know what to write.”

“Just let her know that you are happy. That you are glad to hear from her.”

“Yes.”

“Such a pretty name: Dondeild.”

“She was never fond of it,” Erestor easily replied, a small smile playing about his lips. “Country names were so simple. Straightforward. So were we all. Simple.”

“You miss that life.”

“Of course.” Erestor’s smile faded. “I miss my family. My joy. That peace. The rolling fields and rising trees. The songs and simple country feasts. I don’t think I’ll ever be that happy again. Until I have that innocence back, I can never have that joy.”

“Joy of a different sort, then,” Glorfindel suggested.

Erestor looked directly at him, hiding nothing. “Yes. Exactly. Something different. A joy that is richer somehow. I don’t know what would have become of me, had you not struck me with that misfired ball of snow so many years ago. Would I still be bound up in my black robes and sorrow? Would I still fear the word of love? Would my memories still be the only joy in my life?”

“Such terrible questions, Erestor,” Glorfindel worriedly told him. “Do you really want to know?”

“I suppose not. But I do wonder,” Erestor replied. “I love you, Glorfindel.” His lips lifted in a sudden grin. “I like saying that.”

“I like hearing it,” Glorfindel assured him. Then, he removed himself from his place along the wall of the tub and leant forward to brush his lips, light as a snowflake, against Erestor’s. “I love you. Erestor. Counselor and harlot. What was your name then?”

Erestor rolled those big brown eyes and Glorfindel retreated, sinking back into the hot water. “I’m not going to tell you,” Erestor teasingly told him. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Your parents gave you an embarrassing name?”

“I thought so,” Erestor said. “Dresses weren’t the only reasons Dinilion teased me as a boy and again no, I’m not telling you.”

Glorfindel laughed. “I’m curious now!”

“Too bad,” Erestor told him with a wink and a smirk. “So, what sort of sex do you like to have?”

“Uh . . .” Glorfindel was continually caught by these nonchalant bursts of casual conversation about sex. “Gee, Erestor. I’m not used to these sorts of things coming out of your mouth.”

Erestor raised a brow. “Does it bother you?”

“Noooo . . . It’ll just take some getting used to.”

Erestor smiled. “Good. So. Do I get an answer?”

“Answer?”

Laughing, Erestor shook his head. “Too much too fast, maybe. You know, Glorfindel, it seems to me that you’re the one who’s uncomfortable in these conversations.”

Glorfindel let out a nervous laugh and looked away. “Erestor. The last time I saw you, I felt that I was intruding on your personal space when I held your hand, and now you’re asking about my preferences in the bedroom. It’s disconcerting.”

“I see.” But Erestor would not relent. “When’s the last time you had a lover?”

“Oh, Erestor. Not since . . . A long time ago.”

Erestor leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees under the water, his chin just above the surface. His expression was serious. “Now that I think about it,” he said as though it was just occurring to him for the first time, “I don’t know all that much about you, Captain Glorfindel.”

“No one does,” he said in a small voice.

“I see. Well. Glorfindel, I’m never going to ask you if you are the same Glorfindel of Gondolin, somehow magically returned to us. I won’t ask you about that. But maybe you’ll tell me. Someday.”

“Someday,” Glorfindel echoed. “Aye.”

“Until then,” Erestor sat up straight and drifted around the small pool to sit beside Glorfindel, “You’ve been waiting a long time. Do you want me to . . . ?”

Glorfindel heard the sultry tones, saw the heated glance, felt the wandering hands. He faced the dark-haired terror. “To what?” Glorfindel challenged, blue eyes darkened to something closer to indigo.

Erestor smiled. He leaned in, nose to nose with Glorfindel. “Do you want me to . . .” he slid his hand gently around Glorfindel’s aroused member, “touch you?” His grin turned insolent. “Do you want me to take you in my mouth and suck your orgasm right out of you? I’ve been told I’ve an extraordinarily talented tongue.”

“Ah . . .” Glorfindel’s eyes darted fretfully about the room, suddenly uneasy again, and he quickly licked his full lips. He couldn’t meet Erestor’s eyes. “Y-yes.”

Erestor’s eyes lit up and he moved around to kneel before Glorfindel, placing his hands on the warrior’s hips. “Up you go; sit right on the floor. I can’t hold my breath THAT long.”

Glorfindel, disbelieving at the hasty situation, allowed Erestor to maneuver him until he was sitting on the rim of the sunken tub, his feet on the shelf he had been sitting on in the water. Erestor rose up out of the steaming water like an exotic undine with shining pale skin and wet crinkled hair to kiss Glorfindel long and sensual as his hands played skillfully along the golden Elf’s skin, massaging trembling thighs.

One hand came up to gently cup Glorfindel’s flushing cheek. “I love you,” Erestor breathed against panting lips. Then his own lips discovered the lay of the body beneath, as they fashioned a path from jaw to belly, tasting the salt of the skin past the lavender-vanilla of the water. He made Glorfindel tremble all over, and moan and sigh with longing and lust.

“Erestor.” He could say nothing more. “Erestor!”

Erestor had parted golden thighs and smiled against the hot skin there. He was snickering. “I love you, too.” Then, he swallowed down the purpled hard length that had been quivering in his firm hand.

Glorfindel gasped and just barely held himself back from thrusting forward into the sudden, welcoming heat. He stilled Erestor’s eager motions with a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not going to last long,” Glorfindel warned in a shuddering breath, “at all.”

Erestor made no reply, as he was incapable, but he batted Glorfindel’s hand away and glared up at him, which set the blonde to laughing. “By Elbereth, Erestor, don’t glare at me when you’re doing that . . .”

Seeing the humor, Erestor withdrew so that he could laugh too, peering up at Glorfindel from the water and trying in vain to shake off the humor. “Oh Glorfindel; you’re too much!”

“Uh, please don’t stop . . .”

Erestor made a downward motion with the palm of one wet hand as though to quell his own laughter and closed his eyes to take a deep breath. Still, he smirked as he moved forward to lick teasingly along the wetted shaft before consuming him again.

= = = = =

The girl that manned the station at the door to the Bath House looked suddenly up at the shouts that reverberated down the hall from the private rooms and stood as though to investigate . . . but after a moment’s further consideration, decided not to.

= = = = =

Glorfindel was breathing deep and quick, relaxing in the shallow depths of the pool, Erestor curled contentedly at his side, one wet hand petting at thick, golden hair.

“Z’nice,” Glorfindel muttered.

“I see your speech faculties are returning.”

“Ha. Ha.” Glorfindel was not amused. “Funny.”

“Mmm, I think I really like that drawerful of bath tokens.”

“Good.”

“Ah. You haven’t graduated from one-word sentences. Brain still mushy?”

“Not funny.”

“Mm-hmm, yes it is.”

= = = = =

After their bath, Glorfindel and Erestor could think of nothing but sleep. They forwent dinner altogether, slipping down the hall to the Winter Room where they crawled together into bed to sleep deep and long, entwined closely like lovers long separated. Which they were.

= = = = =

They passed those first days reunited without household duties or any other thing to distract them from one another.

Their nights they lived in the Winter Room, speaking little and sleeping in the downy soft bed draped all in sea foam blue. Sometimes they would take turns reading to each other from their collections of books, mostly short novels and clever poetry. Erestor moved all his clothes and personal possessions there, filling up his own white wardrobe and the empty space on the shelves. He gave up his old room altogether, even though Glorfindel protested that it might be too soon. Too much, too fast, he said. Erestor assured him it wasn’t. They explained in halting language to Elrond an abridged version of what had happened between them, and their Lord offered his smirking congratulations. Meanwhile, Saelbeth, Melpomaen, and Dinendal made it their supreme objective to ensure that the lovers were not disturbed. They occasionally patrolled the corridor that led to their rooms; they haunted Glorfindel’s and Erestor’s offices to guarantee that all was in order. They made sure to send food to the Winter Room, when the two Elves had not been seen all day. They were playful guardians in an uncertain era.

Then there were the times spent in the Summer Room. Glorfindel and Erestor would share their meals while sprawling in the generous mound of pillows set before the giant fireplace, lit only with candles in the midst of summer. And Glorfindel encouraged Erestor to talk. And talk he did. Of the little things that he remembered, that he was finally strong enough to share. Memories of a loving mother, clever sisters, a decent hard-working uncle, and good friends. “Did I ever tell you my earliest memory of my mother?”

They sat among those pillows, all pale purples and burnt umbers. Erestor was wrapped about in a crocheted blanket in streaks of green and blue. Glorfindel was wearing several layers of heavy robes, in dark and mellow tones. It was the first day of winter, and they’d lit their first fire in the Summer Room, though it was only midday. Glorfindel’s golden hair was free and shone like straw-turned-gossamer in the mingled firelight and rays of the sun. Erestor’s dark eyes watched him intently. The warrior shook that golden head and his voice came in a low and pleasing rumble. “You’ve told me little of your mother.”

Erestor nodded. “She was shorter than I would be, but that is not how I remember her. She was tall, larger than life, as my father had been to me. She had flowing silver hair, and sky-blue eyes, and she always seemed ancient to me, as old ones inevitably are. As a toddler, I was ever clinging to her skirts. But firstly I remember one winter afternoon. I was watching my sisters from the window; they were playing in the snow. But I was too young to join them; my mother feared for my safety. Seeing me saddened, she said to me, ‘Come little one. I have something better than play to teach you.’ And she picked me up and set me on the counter. I could still see my sisters out the window, but what my mother was doing was far more interesting. She was making cookies.

“I watched, fascinated. I had always wondered what it was she was eternally laboring over up there on the counter so far out of my sight. I was intrigued, as she toiled with all those sweet-smelling things, telling me all the while precisely what she was doing.

“I grew up in that kitchen,” Erestor wondered slowly, quietly. “Years later, I would stand beside my mother there, while my sisters played in the snow, and she and I would make the cookies together. While they baked in our little brick oven, she and I would warm our hands before it and sip at hot mugs of chamomile tea.” Erestor smiled and laughed, already remembering what came next. “When the cookies were done, I heaped fourteen of them in a kerchief. I wrapped up in my mother’s cloak and took them outside, cradled in my arms. My five sisters crowded around, taking two each. Merai would take four. She could always eat twice as much as any of us.” Erestor suddenly halted, his brows furrowed. “You remind me of her. Merai. She was tall and strong. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed. Sweet and bright . . .” He shook his head. “Anyway. We would eat the cookies, standing with our feet cold in the snow. And then we played. Until the night darkened the ruined backdrop of the snow-strewn meadow that would, come summer, be a field of corn. Until we were frozen with cold and wet through layers of homespun. Until our teeth chattered and our hands were red. Then we’d stream indoors, leaving our sodden clothes in a heap by the door. Our mother waited with a neatly folded pile of six blankets, to wrap each of us up as we came in. We’d sit round the old brick oven and sip warm milk flavored with cocoa.”

= = = = =

So the stories unfolded over the days. Days became weeks, and their common duties resumed. Weeks became months and a new routine developed. Months became years in the Valley.

All the while, Glorfindel said nary a word of himself, though listened intently to all that Erestor divulged to him. On rare occasion, the three henchmen would be invited, and the five of them would crowd the pillows on the floor of the Summer Room while Erestor spoke of the golden years -- his childhood -- in the Greenwood.

= = = = =

But one day, while lounging upon the balcony that overlooked the river to the south, Glorfindel was broodingly silent, and Erestor chanced to speak to him. “Glorfindel?”

There wasn’t a sign of recognition.

“My Love?”

“Hmm?” Glorfindel was elsewhere.

“Glorfindel, you’re acting out of character. What so consumes you?”

“I’m thinking, Erestor.”   
“I suppose there’s a first time for everything. Don’t keep me in suspense.”

Glorfindel smiled weakly, though his eyes still searched the horizon, as though despondently seeking something he knew he would not find. “You’ve confided in me so much; I feel I know you better than I know myself sometimes. But still, it seems odd to me . . . How on Middle Earth did you become Elrond’s Chief Counselor? Forgive me but, you yourself have admitted to your own lack of education, and yet within two-thousand seven-hundred years you’ve become the second most powerful Elf in this Valley. What cool state of mind allowed you to achieve all this?” Erestor made as if to answer, but Glorfindel continued speaking. “Were I to name all the advisors in our council, I would be able to tell you: this one is the son of a lord, that one a prince’s daughter. This Elf worked his way up from ranks of the scholars and that one from the soldier’s command. Not one could boast their beginnings as a farmer!”

“Glorfindel, were you not there for the course of those two-thousand seven-hundred years? Were we not introduced while still walking in the shadow of Mount Doom? You know better than I what you thought of me then. You should have seen the progression.”

Glorfindel slowly nodded to himself. “You were Elrond’s assistant at every turn. Though I never saw him teaching you your letters and languages. But I suppose, if you were always with him, then you have good reason to know the workings of an Elven realm. It was several hundred years before you earned a position as Counselor. Many more led to the title of Chief. And,” he carefully thought, “so little care had you for emotion that you spent all your days immersed in the workings of cool logic. You never did say much . . .”

“I had no need to.” Erestor’s smile was subtle but sure, his voice hushed.

The echo of a chuckle moved in Glorfindel’s throat. “That’s the truth,” he marveled. “The merest glare could strike any of us down without a word.”

“And I discovered,” Erestor continued, “that ‘cool logic’ could surmount any number of unforeseen challenges, and that relying so heavily upon my intelligence that I -- in fact -- had a great store of it. Enough knowledge and wit together to accomplish a great many things.”

Silence fell then, as Glorfindel’s internal deliberations continued and Erestor allowed them.

The air seemed to shift between them then. Glorfindel looked down to the stone of the balcony floor and then over to Erestor’s patience gaze. “Erestor. You’ve confided in me so much.”

“So you’ve said. Glorfindel,” he continued before the blonde could say anything more, “you don’t . . . *owe* me anything. Is that what you think? You don’t. What histories I offer you, I offer freely. Whatever guilt you feel is not necessary.”

“But I want to tell you.”

“That’s different then.”

Glorfindel turned to face Erestor, and his fair face was marked for the first time with a great depth of fear and uncertainty. “I died in Gondolin.”

Erestor’s hand flew up to his mouth of its own volition. “Oh Glorfindel,” he breathed, eyes wide with astonishment. “I never believed the stories. I didn’t.”

Glorfindel swallowed nervously. “I tend not to dwell on my own death. Much like yourself, there are those things I prefer to remember, and those things I don’t. But I want to tell you. Now. While I have the strength and conviction. While I’m slightly drunk.”

“You’ve been drinking?”

“Let me speak.”

“If you must.”

“Yes I must. I don’t like to talk about it. I haven’t before, except to Elrond. And I won’t want to talk about it again. But, I love you Erestor. And I want you to know, to know and understand all of me.

“I was born a Lord in Gondolin. I lived for Gondolin. I died for Gondolin. And all my life there was a cycle of duty. I obeyed the will of others and none of my own. And all I had to show at the end of it was an empty life. I had never loved, nor known passion for anything so simple as play or work. And then I died. Do you know, birth and death are possibly the most traumatizing experiences we will ever know, but we do not remember them? It is true. I know how I died, of course. At least, I know how it has been recorded in the history books. But I do not remember it. I do not want to.

“The afterlife, however, is a different story. These things I will tell you, they will sound odd. There will not be anything in your experience to compare them to. And here it is. I lived then-- Well. Not lived. Let me say I *dwelt* in the Halls. Yes, the Halls of Waiting. It is like no place on Middle Earth. It is easy to get lost in an ephemeral world where things that seem solid have no basis in physicality. What seemed to be walls, floor, ceilings were not. They shifted, moved. And my own body, I knew, was not a real body. We neither ate nor slept, we souls who dwelt there. I was far from alone. Yet I could not share in the representation of life about me. So many, you must understand, are happy there. The afterlife is a good place. But not for me. I did not understand it.

“After I-did-not-know-how-long, I was approached. It was an Elf, or so I thought, and one I never had seen before. He addressed me and said, ‘I am concerned for you.’ I answered, ‘I am not happy here, it is true.’ ‘Do you know why that is?’ he asked. I told him no. He answered me, ‘Glorfindel, the afterlife is an echo of life. If you cannot be happy here, it is because you never were happy in your own life.’ And I realized he was telling the truth. I did not know what happiness was, and never had. He told me, ‘Glorfindel, you went about life all wrong. You are the only Elf I have ever seen who neglected to discover joy. Do you know what havoc that wreaks for us?’ I asked him who ‘us’ was. ‘Why, the Valar of course. We are tired of dealing with your melancholy. It pervades these sacred Halls like a shadow of evil. It is not acceptable.’

“Then he said, ‘Glorfindel, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you failed at life. And now you pollute the afterlife with your unique non-existence.’ I did not know how to respond to this and so said, ‘I am sorry. Can you teach me to angst more subtly?’ He laughed and told me, ‘I am glad to see you have a sense of humor, whatever else you may lack. Glorfindel, we’ve reached a decision. Now, what did you do when your soldiers failed a test?’ ‘I made them repeat it.’ ‘Right,’ he said, ‘That’s what we’re going to do with you.’

“The next thing I knew, I was walking on a road, unknowing if I was alive or yet dead. Lord Elrond found me wandering alone and confused in the wilds of his land and took me in. I was not thinking rightly, I suppose, when I told him my name was ‘Glorfindel.’ Mayhap I should have thought up another. But that was what I told him, for good or for ill, and that was how all the Valley knew me. And for the first time, illuminated by the soul of a half-Elf and living again in a valley sanctuary, I knew joy. No obligations nor titles bound me to any lord or land and I knew happiness because of this.

“I allowed myself to learn the value of a quiet evening in my own company, or of carousing with the youngsters of a cheerful land. And after I discovered this freedom, I declared my allegiance to the Lord and land of Imladris, understanding -- finally -- what that meant, what this should be. Allegiance is love, not slavery. Thoughtful loyalty, not mindless obligation. It is shared freedom. It took a second life to learn this.”

“Then I met you, indeed in the very shadow of Mount Doom, after nearly loosing myself in the hate and hopelessness of years of war. I found hope in the end of that war, and I found mystery in you. And in you, I also saw myself. An Elf void of happiness. I wished I could teach to you the joy that I had taught myself. But I was never brave enough to say aught of it.”

Glorfindel shook his head. “If my story is muddled, I apologize. So much of it is still hazy in my mind, like times in your own life, I know. And that’s it, I’m done with it. If you have questions, I ask you to hold on to them for a later time. For today I am done.”

= = = = =

But Erestor had no questions. He embraced Glorfindel and then let the reborn warrior leave, disappear into the white halls of Imladris.

Erestor took it upon himself to call upon Glorfindel’s minions.

Over the years, Erestor had come to know them rather well. Sometimes he worked closely with Melpomaen, and he knew the scribe best of the three, from the lad’s eagerness to succeed in every endeavor to his well-hidden insecurities. Melpomaen feared so much, when he had no reason to. He was extraordinarily shy upon meeting others for the first time and had no real confidence. Erestor was amazed: just the simplest compliment could set the scribe to beaming and improve his mood for days. Erestor felt he understood Melpomaen.

Then there was Dinendal. The guardsman was wholly uninterested in what others thought of him, aside from his few friends and especially Glorfindel. Dinendal was one of those who had yet to outgrow the energy of youth and could spend all day on horseback or sparring or dancing or any other physical task without tiring. And, like Melpomaen, his enthusiasm for any task was unending and uplifting. Yet the difference between them was marked. Melpomaen’s tendency for quiet was matched by Dinendal’s penchant for conversation. It seemed the auburn-haired warrior could easily outshine the dark little scribe.

Saelbeth was the link between them. The woodworker, the artist, the straw-haired youth was youngest, sweetest, and often mediated between the other two. Saelbeth, unlike his friends, looked outward far more than inward, was concerned with others more than himself, and saw in his two friends and his two mentors the very best people on Eru’s Middle Earth.

Erestor sought them out now. It was late in the day, after much work was done, and so he searched first for Melpomaen’s room. Still officially regarded as a visitor from the Harbors, Melpomaen had quarters in the long-term guest wing of the main House. Saelbeth lived with his family south of the gates among the little village there and Dinendal had his place in the barracks. Most often, the three could be found lounging about Melpomaen’s rooms. Which was where Erestor so swiftly traveled.

Melpomaen’s door was as unremarkable as all the white doors in the white corridor, but it lay at the very end of the hall. Last door on the left. Easy to find, but quite a hike from the Summer Room balcony. Erestor did not even take a moment to catch his breath, knocking perfunctorily and pushing open the brass-handled door. “Boys! I--”

The ‘boys’ as Erestor called them were all three of them squeezed into Melpomaen’s narrow bed, completely naked, and bound up in a unique entanglement of limbs.

“Ah . . .” He stared. “Ah . . .” He stared. “Oh. Um . . .” Erestor was struck speechless, brown eyes wide and far past any simple state of shock.

Dinendal snorted. Which set the other two to laughing.

Still chuckling, Melpomaen extricated himself from the bunch, wrapping a white sheet about his thin form as he did so. Dinendal and Saelbeth lay side-by-side, pulling the blankets up to their chins and failing to hold back their wailing laughter.

Melpomaen was first to compose himself. “It’s nothing to fret about, Erestor. But, please, close the door.”  
 Erestor wordlessly did so.

“You were bound to find out eventually,” the scribe continued. “I’m only sorry it had to be in such a shocking manner. Though really, one normally waits for a response after knocking.” He paused then, as the other two finally quieted. “Are you . . .” Melpomaen was frightened again. “Do you think it wrong of us?”

“Wrong?” Erestor carefully echoed. He schooled his features into a mask such as he once wore in common company. “Immoral, perhaps?” Oh, he was scaring them now. “Wicked, maybe, for the Valar teach us that one soul alone shall ever match our own, that sin of the flesh be a selfish indulgence, and that a harsh governor awaits us at the crossing of the Sea.” Three faces drawn in lines of horror and betrayal stared at him, pale and strained. “Wrong, you ask me? If you ask me this, then,” Erestor’s façade cracked and became a smile, “then you have no idea what antics I got up to in my own youth!” He laughed then, and the others laughed uncertainly with him. “Come now!” Erestor shouted, leaned down to brace himself on his knees as he laughed. “Wrong of you? How can you ask me such a thing? Oh, my boys,” Erestor sighed. He stood up straight again and approached Melpomaen to embrace the sheet-draped form. “You know your own hearts. There is no sin, no wickedness here. I hope you did not truly need my confirmation of such a statement.”

Melpomaen hugged him back, as well as he could, and shuddered. “Need, no, but you scared us there, Erestor.”

Erestor pulled back to smile at each of them in turn. “Good,” he told them. “It will teach you, maybe, to lock doors.”

He turned, then, to leave them to their privacy, but before he quite reached the door, Dinendal wanted to know, “Your youth, Erestor? What antics?”

Erestor turned back to regard them with narrowed brows. After a moment’s thought, he offered, “Have you ever heard of the Scarlet Harlot?”

They shook their heads.  
 Erestor smiled. “Ask Saelbeth’s grandfather.” And he left.

= = = = =

On his own, Erestor headed for the kitchens himself, grinning all the while.

= = = = =

By the time Glorfindel returned to the rooms, he had managed to regain his common manner of felicity and upbeat comportment. He swept into the Winter Room, hanging up his cloak in a smooth move beside Erestor’s own on the awaiting hook. He was all a-flutter to speak, but silenced words before they could start, shutting the door and looking at the scene before him.

Erestor had set up a short table before the small fireplace, which had a young fire crackling on the grate. A simple meal of bread, honey, and broth was set up with a bottle of mead and two clear crystal glasses. “I didn’t see you at dinner,” Erestor told him.

“No,” Glorfindel haltingly supplied. “I wasn’t hungry.” He stared at the tableau a moment. The blue drapes were closed to the moonlight. The fire jumped and sparked, casting leaping light and shadow across Erestor’s face in turns. A few scattered candles illuminated the rest of the light-colored room, though the corners were still empty with shadow. Though the winter was young and still mellow, the fire burned high and Erestor was wrapped in what Glorfindel called his ‘cozy robes,’ a thick sort of fleece the color of midnight skies. His ebony hair was loose and recently brushed; he could tell because the strands were fluffed with static at the ends.

Glorfindel toed off his boots and came to sit on the cushion at the opposing side of the table. They ate quietly, few words passing between them. When they finished, Erestor piled the dishes on the tray and Glorfindel opened the door so that he could place them outside on the sideboard in the hall.

Then, Erestor ushered Glorfindel to the center of the room, carefully undressed him, led him to the bed, and spent an excessive amount of time undoing the warrior’s braids and combing out the fine, honey-spun hair. “Your hair is truly golden, you know that,” Erestor murmured. He placed a simple kiss on Glorfindel’s bare shoulder and then coaxed him under the sheets.

Erestor retreated to disrobe. With detachment, Glorfindel watched the body smooth and pale as alabaster shimmer in the firelight. Arms thin and wiry, belly flat and lean, mile-long legs framing lax sex. Big brown eyes and long black hair. “You’re beautiful.”

Erestor shook his head. He crawled into bed to curl up to Glorfindel’s side. “Look who’s talking.”

They smiled.

“It’s early yet for bed,” Erestor pointed out. “Shall I tell you a story?”

“By all means.”

“It’s about your little helpers . . .”

= = = = =

Glorfindel was in his office. He didn’t actually like his office. It was, formerly, a stable, and it stilled smelled like one, and files just did not survive the humidity. Young interns transferred all permanent paperwork to the storage facilities in the House. As it was, Glorfindel disliked paperwork altogether and spent as much time as possible not being in his office and not doing paperwork. But alas, not all a captain’s life is glory, and he had accepted that long ago.

He was there now, bent harshly over the desk, gold hair braided out of the way, his large hand carefully guiding the quill across the parchment.

Erestor was good at being quiet. It was a skill one tended to pick up when one liked avoiding people, but he surprised even himself when he managed to slip undetected into Glorfindel’s office, and slowly sneak upon him.

Slowly, Erestor moved so that he could peer over Glorfindel’s shoulder. “What’s that?”

Glorfindel’s reaction was overwhelming. In one fluid movement, he opened the top drawer of the desk and swept all his papers within it, nearly spilling the ink. “Erestor! You sneak!”

“Was that poetry, Glorfindel?”

“Poetry!” Glorfindel declared. “Don’t be ridiculous! I . . . I can’t write poetry!”

“Oh really?” Erestor asked, pulling a piece of parchment from behind his back with a knowing smile.

Glorfindel paled. “That . . . I threw that away.”

“It turned up on my desk this morning all the same.”

Downright shocked, Glorfindel said, “How?”

“I think your minions have been looking out for us.” Erestor took the parchment in both hands and cleared his throat.

“Oh Elbereth no!” Glorfindel cried, his head falling to thud on the desk, knowing there was little else he could do.

Erestor read aloud.

“When all the world is gray and dim,  
All I do is think of him  
When my mind remembers pain,  
I just think of him again.”

“Please,” Glorfindel downright begged, “please stop.”

Erestor couldn’t cease laughing. He calmed himself enough to say, “But there’s a whole four more verses.”

“Spare me.”

“I didn’t know your speech could be so moving.”

“Oh, shut it.”

= = = = =

Erestor and Glorfindel walked the halls after lunch. They spoke of nothing in particular. The faintest trace of a smile lingered about Erestor’s lips.

“I’m, uh,” Glorfindel began. “I’m not gonna hear the end of this poetry thing am I?”

“Not for a loooonnng time,” Erestor agreed.

Their steps slowed at a commotion from the opposite end of the corridor and an unfamiliar sight.

“Isn’t that Melpomaen?” Erestor asked.

The young scribe seemed to fly down the hall, rose-pale robes flapping out behind him, black hair streaming. His light shoes pounded the marble floor and his arms flapped about wildly. He was grinning, they saw, as he drew nearer and he skidded to a halt before the pair. “News from Dinendal!” he panted out.

“Isn’t he on the border this week?” Erestor asked.

“Aye! He’s sent news! I’ve just had it from Saelbeth: the party from Mirkwood, you know the scholar’s council? There’s a lady among them! They don’t know her.”

Glorfindel and Erestor exchanged anticipatory, uncertain looks. “Cellel?” Glorfindel softly asked.

“We shall soon see,” Erestor murmured as Melpomaen retreated down the hall, nearly as fast as he had advanced.

The pair stayed where they were, listening carefully to the clatter of hooves and all manner of noise in the forecourt. There were shouts of welcome and announcement. The bell in the tower rang twice. Shouts became a smatter of voices and movement. The horses were led away.

Melpomaen had long disappeared round the far corner, but now he reappeared, a girl all wrapped in a forest-green cloak at his side. He pointed down the hall at Erestor. The girl turned.

“Craban!”

Glorfindel couldn’t help it. He raised his eyebrows. “Your name is Raven?”

Erestor looked shiftily over at him. “It was the hair.” Then she clattered down the hall until she reached them and Erestor was lost in a cloud of flying silver and brilliant green.

“Oh by the Valar I thought I’d never see you again!” Cellel pulled back to smile brilliantly up into his face. She was short. Even for a maiden. Suddenly she stepped back, clapping her green-gloved hands over her mouth, green eyes pale as overturned poplar leaves flicked to Glorfindel’s face and then back to Erestor’s. She clasped her green-gloved hands before her breast and her eyes grew ever wider in her pretty face with a look of horror. “Oh! I’m sorry! I forgot!”

Erestor smiled at her. “It’s all right. But I didn’t get a chance to return your embrace.” He opened his arms and she flew into them again. They held one another tight. Her sleeveless milky white arms wrapped tight about his torso. One of his hands cradled the back of her head, fingers lost in strands of molten silver. Tears fell from his eyes. “I never thought I’d hold you again.”

Glorfindel took a step back and looked away, as though this would offer some privacy.

“Oh I missed you!” she cried. “Erestor. Erestor! It doesn’t sound right, but I’ll remember in future, I promise.” She pulled back to look up into his face. “Erestor. Uncle Erestor.”

He laughed and wiped unthinkingly at the tears on his own pale cheeks with the sleeve of his dark robe. “You never called me uncle,” he reminded her. “You don’t have to start now.”

“Oh but I want to!” She pulled back, suddenly excited. “I’ve brought gifts! Things from the Greenwood. They’re in my bags; someone’s taking them to my rooms. Oh and here,” she withdrew from an inner pocket of her robes three sealed bits of parchment. “I’ve letters. I nearly forgot; I was told to give you them first thing. Another from Dondeild and one from Caranir. And the last,” her sweet, bell-like tone faltered, “the last is from the King. King Thranduil. I’d never spoken to him before, only seen him down the great line of lords and princes at the end of the Great Hall. But, news of your survival reached far with Glorfindel’s enquiries, and even the King heard and he remembered you. Here.”

Erestor wordlessly took the letters.

“Well,” Cellel said, starting to come down off her high, and knowing that Erestor would want to read those letters. “Aunt Dondy says I am ‘over exuberant’ and shouldn’t annoy you overmuch, so I’ll go now, and meet you later.”

“We’ll have dinner together in the Dining Hall,” Erestor told her. “There are private tables. We’ll have a decent conversation then, all right?”  
 She smiled brilliantly. “Sounds good!” She flashed another smile at Glorfindel, leaned in to kiss Erestor’s cheek, and then scooted off back down the hall, where Melpomaen was waiting to show her the guest quarters.

“How do women do it?” Glorfindel’s wondering eyes followed her retreat.

“Do what?”

“That young lady just made a weeks long journey on horseback from Mirkwood across Mountains and into this Valley. And there is not a speck of dirt on the hems of her gown.”

Erestor just laughed.

= = = = =

Erestor wanted to be alone when he read the letters.  
 Glorfindel let him.

Erestor was in the Winter Room.

Glorfindel waited in the Summer Room.

Glorfindel waited for two hours.

Then Erestor called to him. “Glorfindel? Would you come in please?”

He tried not to run, opening the door slowly and closing it carefully behind him. The dinner bell would ring within the hour.

Erestor was sitting at Glorfindel’s desk. Glorfindel sat on the bed.

“Thranduil’s letter,” Erestor began, “was very kind.” It was as though he was trying to regain his method of non-emotion. “The first few paragraphs were filled with your usual diplomatic drivel. It was written in his own hand. He . . . apologized. For leaving me on the battlefield that day. For leaving me, like I was just trash to be left behind with the bodies. Not his words. He was actually very compassionate and, I think, sincere. It’s beyond me.”

Glorfindel waited before asking, “Can I read it?”

Erestor wordlessly held up the single piece of parchment and Glorfindel was quick to snatch it up.

His eyes dashed across the page. “Diplomatic drivel is right,” he muttered to himself. “Hmm. . . He expects ‘no reply, considering the matter at hand’ yatta yatta. Are you going to write back?”

Erestor shook his head. “I don’t know.”

= = = = =

At dinner, Glorfindel watched from a distance the table that Erestor shared with his niece, laughing together over a great many things and crying over some others. They ate some of their food, but not much. Cellel seemed a loving sort of person. Generous. Like her uncle. Glorfindel couldn’t imagine either of them living in the Mirkwood caves, especially in the beginning. No heat. No light. He shuddered. He could understand why she would choose to risk her life in the outdoors rather than live it in darkness.

After dinner, when the Elves in the Dining Hall were making the mass exodus to the Hall of Fire, Glorfindel remained at the head table, seeing that Erestor and Cellel were slowly making their way to him, heads bent together in discussion.

Several young Elves descended upon the table, whisking away the evening’s dishes. Glorfindel left them to it, standing to wait for the pair to come to him.  
 When they did, Cellel shyly smiled at him. “Erestor told me that you and he . . .” It was as though a nervous twitch carried her forward and she embraced the warrior nearly two heads taller than herself. “It’s good. I’m glad.” She stepped back to look up at him. “You make him happy.”

Glorfindel watched Erestor blush.

Cellel jumped back then to clap her hands together and look between them. “Shall we go get my presents?” She bobbed up and down enthusiastically like a cork in the sea.

“Yes, let’s,” Erestor agreed, holding out his arm so that she might take it.

= = = = =

The three Elves spoke as they moved through the corridor dark with the shadows of night, lit by interspersed torches and a few bright stars through clerestory windows.

Erestor explained to Glorfindel, “Cellel is staying through the winter and spring. She’ll return with the main party come summer. We must manage, in that time, to show her all the wonders of our Valley.”

“And we will,” Glorfindel promised, “And gladly.”

Cellel burst in, “Erestor! I don’t know what I shall do with myself! I came here to visit you and it did not occur to me that you have your own duties to attend to, and Glorfindel too; I don’t want to keep you from him. You mustn’t dote on me unendingly, but what is there to do here in the Valley?”

“Do?” Glorfindel asked her. “Why, I suppose you mean aside from long hours spent in happy entertainment in the Hall of Fire, and browsing the unending library, and walking the winter paths, and playing acceptable sports in the courtyards with other young ladies, and going to the pubs, and visiting the crafts shoppes?”

“I hadn’t realized,” she wondered. “Acceptable sports?”

Glorfindel and Erestor exchanged questioning glances over Cellel’s head. “Croquet?” Glorfindel put forth.

“Mm, yes. I think mostly croquet.” Erestor brightened. “And we’ll introduce you to Arwen!”

Cellel turned to him with those wide poplar eyes. “Lady Arwen?” she squeaked. “But she’s like a princess!”

“So?” Glorfindel wondered.

“So,” she wheeled to face him, “I’m a gardener!”

Glorfindel’s brow crinkled in consternation. “I’d forgotten what it is like to dwell in a kingdom. Imladris is not like that, Cellel. Arwen would love to meet you.”

“Oh. Well, I . . .”

“You think about it,” Erestor told her. “Now, which is your room?”

Cellel rushed forward and ushered the two Elves through the door. Aside from the saddle bags slumped on the floor beside the bed, there was a small travel sack on the vanity, which she immediately opened. “Aunt Dondy and Uncle Caranir helped me put this together.” First, she pulled out a small jar, carefully wrapped in cloth. It was clear glass and the liquid inside was nearly black. “Greenwood vanilla; I’m sure you remember it. Pure, unfiltered.”

Erestor’s brows lifted and he took it with interest in his hands, holding it up to the light from the candles that Glorfindel was efficiently lighting. “Mmm,” he murmured to himself, “Cookies.”

“And I brought you a cool-light.”

Glorfindel came near to watch over their shoulders as Cellel removed a greenish sort of stone from a black velvet pouch. Erestor took it from her and again held it to the light. He explained its purpose to Glorfindel. “They grow in certain places in the caves. They glow by themselves. In complete darkness, one crystal is enough to light a small room. They were essential to us in the early days. Enough light to see by. No heat, no smoke either. Great nightlight,” he suggested. Glorfindel smiled.

Then, Cellel withdrew a tough leather cylinder, the sort used to transport maps and art. She handed it over. “It’s a sort of family portrait. Aunt Dondy, Uncle Caranir, and me. They’re really like my parents, you know. They never had a child of their own. I think they remembered the fields, and they didn’t want to birth a child in the caves and raise him there. I was like their daughter anyway. Still am.”

Erestor handed the tube to Glorfindel. “I can’t wait to see it. I’ll have Saelbeth frame it.”

Cellel’s exuberance died down without warning when she took out her last present. It was a tiny rosewood box, intricately carved. She looked up to Erestor with wide eyes. “When Aunt Dondeild realized the attack, you know, in the beginning. She was alone in the house with your mother. Grandma gave her a sack and told her to run for the caves. She ran--”

Erestor held up his hand. “She told me about this in the letter. You don’t have to.”

Cellel sighed with relief. “Good. Uh, here.”

Erestor took the box and slipped it into a pocket with the cool-light. “Thank you, Cellel.” He hugged her then, and they bid their goodnights.

= = = = =

They weren’t two steps into the Winter Room when Glorfindel started. “So what’s in the box?”

Erestor shut the door and waved him toward the bed. “Go. Sit.”

Glorfindel did so, after setting the leather tube on the vanity. He didn’t take off his boots or his outer robe or anything. He stared at Erestor, waiting.

The Counselor went over to sit at the desk. He lit the lantern there and turned up the wick, brightening the room. He took up one of the letters and unfolded it. Skimming the passages, he finally said, “Here. Dondeild told me . . . Well, I’ll just read it, shall I?”

He read.

~*~*~*~*~*~

There is something I have kept from you a long time, as Mother did before me. It is not a secret, really, or important. I don’t think it’s important. But I feel terribly childish and terribly guilty for keeping anything from you at all, no matter how small.

When Mother first forbid myself and my sisters to speak with you, we didn’t understand. Eventually, we heard the rumors, of course. Even then, I don’t think I completely understood. And then later, when I did understand, I could not for the life of me comprehend why Mother would take such offense at your actions. Except that she found some great sin in them, and I did not. Still, I obeyed her wishes. I ignored you when we chanced to meet, and when you sought me out I turned you away. I shall never forgive myself for it. I was afraid and I did not even know why. It seemed so much easier, at the time, to just push all of it away, all the intrigue and rumors and pity.

Then, one day, I was to meet Caranir for dinner. We had just begun officially courting, and Mother took me to sit at her small table in her room to look through the jewelry there, and find something for me. We didn’t have much by that point, as you know. But I saw something I’d never seen before. It was a small rosewood box, a box that could only contain a ring. I opened it and asked Mother what it was.

She was unspeakably angry. Not at me, I don’t think. She grabbed it out of my hands and put it away. She said, “It was your father’s. He wanted your brother to have it.” That was all she would say, and I thought that was the last time I would see the box.

It wasn’t. On that terrible night, when the spiders came screaming out of the darkness amid the brushfires, Mother shoved a sack at me and told me to run for the caves. She said she would be behind me.

I ran blindly.

It was only much later, after the mourning and the shock, and after you disappeared into the caves to leave me with Caranir and Cellel did I bother to open that sack. She had prepared some food that would keep, and a wineskin. There was also a small selection of family heirlooms, including the rosewood box. I refused to explain to Caranir what it was or why it was important. I felt guilty that Mother had never given it to you. I felt guilty that I had forgotten it. I felt guilty every time I passed you in the caves and did not speak of it to you. It was a secret that grew from nothing. The longer I put it off, the harder it became to think of it.

I didn’t want to have to explain to you how bitter Mother had been. How much she’d kept from you. How much it hurt me to go along with all of it and how much I’d come to hate that part of her, long after she was dead.

This is the end of it, then. I have told you, and when Cellel presents to you her gifts, she will give you the rosewood box.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Erestor stopped then. He couldn’t read any more. His hands were shaking as much as his voice and he put the letter down. “So much . . . stupidity,” he ground out. “So much blind fear. I hate it.”

Then he reached into his pocket. He set aside the cold-light, which gave off just the faintest green glow of phosphorescence that Glorfindel could see. Erestor set the box on the desk beside the letter. It was tiny, and nearly the reddish color of cherry wood. Erestor stared at it.  
 Glorfindel bit back his words.

Then, Erestor reached out to open it, the miniature hinges squeaking. He could not hide the shaking of his pale hands.

Within it was a ring. It seemed a dull metallic color, like pewter or even iron. Erestor took the ring out of the box and cradled it in his hands in his lap, rubbing at the surface of it with a fold of his robe. He held it up to the lantern light. It shone like silver mithril, only different. Brighter.

He wordlessly handed it out to Glorfindel. “Feel it.”

Glorfindel held out it his slightly cupped hand and Erestor dropped the ring there. Glorfindel gasped. “It’s so heavy!”

“It’s platinum. A rare metal. There were a few strains of it in the rocky outcroppings of the forest when the Greenwood was pure. I hear it’s all gone now.” Erestor watched Glorfindel hold the ring up and turn it, so the lantern light glinted off the edges. There was a design of vines around the outside, and an inscription on the inside. Erestor narrowed his eyes. “What does it say? On the inside?”

Glorfindel stood from the bed to kneel by the desk, holding the ring close to the lantern. “I can barely make it out,” he said, slowly turning the platinum band. “‘From earth, life. From father, son.’”

“An old country saying,” Erestor explained. “Sometimes we toasted to it. On feast days.” Glorfindel continued to study the ring. “It was believed -- as far as I know -- by everyone in the Greenwood that farmers were essential to life and highly revered. The farmland was the soul of the Greenwood. From earth, life. We depended upon the earth to feed us. From father, son. All sons have a father, a name to live up to, a legacy to gain. All but me. All but every orphan.”

Glorfindel ignored Erestor’s tears. He took Erestor’s nearer hand, the left one, and slipped the platinum ring onto the index finger. It fit well.

Erestor marveled to see it there and held his hand up before his face. “The platinum rings were a tradition. When the eldest male child reached his majority, his father would give him the family ring. So the rings passed through the generations; so the family lines were remembered. Elstras wore one. Dinilion never did; his grandfather had been a younger brother, you see. There were only ever a few hundred of these.”

“It’s yours, by right,” Glorfindel told him.

Erestor shook his hand. “A few thousand years too late. It doesn’t feel like mine. It feels unnatural.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

Erestor took the ring off and put it back in the box. “I don’t want to.” He stood and turned as though to leave. “I’m not my father’s son. Not really. I never knew him. We were connected only by blood. And that never seemed to matter to anyone.” And then he left.

= = = = =

Glorfindel stayed up.

He got a fire going in the grate and then he tidied the room. It needed it. Erestor kept his life fairly ordered, but Glorfindel was apt to toss his things about and forget them. And Erestor was resolved to never clean up after him. So, Glorfindel kept himself occupied in the late evening hours by picking up his odds and ends and tidying his closet and organizing the desk.

Erestor returned well past midnight. He was pale as snow and carried with him his fatigue like a winter mantle, heavy but unseen.

Glorfindel looked up when the door opened and so silent and withdrawn was his love he seemed a ghost, enshrouded in a weak desolation as in a fog.

It was Glorfindel’s turn to take Erestor by the hand and turn him round and remove the all those layers that made up what was left of his outer shields. But as Glorfindel was leading him to the bed, Erestor unaccountably resisted. Glorfindel’s momentum carried him out of Erestor’s handhold and the warrior turned round to cant his head in confusion.

Erestor’s eyes drooped with the exhaustion that comes from overextended emotions. “Let’s go to the Summer Room. Just a . . . change of scenery.”

Glorfindel stared a moment. He stood up straight. “All right. If you’re sure.”

Erestor did not answer. He led the way, his naked form eerie in the light of the lantern and the dying fire, pallid and wisp-like.

As if in a trance, Glorfindel followed.

= = = = =

They’d never slept in the Summer Room before, if one discounted the drunken stupor they fell into before the fireplace occasionally. They’d never even sat on the bed. Hardly looked at it. Didn’t discuss it.

They changed the sheets though, when the dust accumulated. There was only the tiniest bit now, and Erestor carefully pulled back the covers, so the dust didn’t go flying. It would make him sneeze. He climbed onto the mattress as Glorfindel carried in the lantern to set it on the chest of drawers.

Glorfindel looked down on him.

Erestor looked back. “Take off your clothes.”

Following orders, Glorfindel turned his back and slowly removed his own layers. He was uncertain. In unfamiliar territory. He didn’t know what was expected or what was allowed. He knew that he could just ask.

But, he didn’t.

He left his garments in a crumpled heap on the floor. He sat tentatively on the bed.

Erestor reached weakly out to him. “Just hold me.”

Glorfindel lay down, turned out the lantern, pulled up the blankets, and held his love.

Erestor gave him a shock by kissing him. Aggressively. By the time Glorfindel got over his shock and began to respond, Erestor pulled back. “If you don’t want to sleep here, you should have said something.”

“No, I,” Glorfindel was confounded. “I want to. I do. I just . . . You know me and uncertainty. Throws me off.”

“Needs some getting used to? Right. If it’s too much too fast, just let me know.”

“Right,” Glorfindel murmured against Erestor’s temple, running his fingers through the hair there. “I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.”

“More or less,” Erestor agreed. “Sleep now.”

“Mmm.”

= = = = =

Glorfindel awoke to the sensation of friction. Rhythmic friction.

Early morning sunlight was streaming through the gauzy peach-lemon curtains and lit up the Summer Room like a garden.

Glorfindel threw back the covers to see Erestor looking mischievously up at him, both talented hands wrapped around Glorfindel’s swiftly hardening flesh. He shook the sleep from his blue eyes. “What a way to wake up.”

Aside from a few playful touches, they hadn’t done anything like this since the Bath House the day Erestor got back from his Lothlorien sojourn.

“You up for some fun?” Erestor wanted to know as he slithered his way along Glorfindel’s body.

“Up? Yes. Decidedly so.”

Erestor laughed, hovering above Glorfindel, face to face. Black hair trailed over the golden skin and Erestor slowly leaned down, as though to kiss Glorfindel’s lips.

Glorfindel closed his eyes and Erestor took a detour, fastening his mouth to Glorfindel’s ear tip instead.

“Aiya!” Blue eyes flashed open. He squirmed delectably, gripped Erestor’s upper arms reflexively, unrelentingly. “Stop,” he panted. He turned his head so Erestor had better access and pulled him closer. “Don’t stop,” he sighed out, humping up against Erestor’s thigh.

Erestor pulled away, shot a glancing kiss against Glorfindel’s lips and moved on to the Elf’s taut neck. Glorfindel made a noise between a squeak and a squeal when Erestor played his lips upon the heating flesh beside his jaw, beneath his ear. Erestor’s hands were downright fiendish: one played softly down between Glorfindel’s legs and the other abused a stiff nipple. “Love you,” Erestor whispered against the skin above Glorfindel’s collarbone. He smiled. “Love to make you scream.”

Glorfindel’s hands tangled in the red linen sheets, rather than bruise Erestor’s pale skin. It was so sudden. So wonderful. “Aiya!”

Erestor worked his way down the golden torso, his hot kisses applied between hot words, encouraging and practically sinful. When he dipped his tongue into Glorfindel’s navel, the prone Elf let out a staccato shout and twisted the bed sheets to permanent wrinkles.

Erestor didn’t lose a beat, moving down further still. Tongue, lips, a touch of teeth, had Glorfindel hard and pulsing. He moaned. They both did. Erestor opened his mouth and sunk slowly down, taking Glorfindel all the way in.

Glorfindel tried to hold himself in check, thrusting minutely and keeping his hands at his sides.

At this reservation, Erestor withdrew, concentrating on the tip of Glorfindel’s arousal, one hand playing with the sac beneath. Then he pulled his hands away, bracing them on the mattress on either side of Glorfindel’s hips. He used only his tongue. Eyes dark with playful mischievousness glared up at Glorfindel. Erestor withdrew to say in a voice thick with hunger, “Take my mouth.”

Then he rested parted lips at the crown of Glorfindel’s cock and waited.

The golden warrior groaned. “You’re going to make me do this, aren’t you?”

Erestor grinned up at him. “You want to do this, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

Throwing back his head, Glorfindel howled, “You’re insane! I love it!” He could hold himself in check no longer and began thrusting up into that inordinately hot and welcoming mouth.

Glorfindel’s encouraging words degenerated into barely identifiable syllables, which fell apart into varying consonant and vowel sounds as he fucked Erestor’s mouth without restraint.

Keeping his hands braced on the mattress, Erestor persuaded Glorfindel to thrust as deep as he liked, moaning around the generous mouthful and using his tongue to full advantage.

Finding a rhythm that suited, Glorfindel kept a deep and steady pace, loosing himself to the ecstasy. One large hand reached out to tangle in Erestor’s dark hair, the strands caught between strong fingers, and Glorfindel forced himself deeper. His desperate moans grew high-pitched and needy and his touch became thoughtlessly harsh, clawing at Erestor’s hair and pounding into his mouth.

When Glorfindel came, he let go with a roar and Erestor sucked hard, swallowing energetically.

Glorfindel’s mind blanked for an instant as his hips pumped instinctively, chasing down the last of that pleasure.

He slipped from Erestor’s mouth and gently untangled his hand from the snarled mess of black hair. His eyes were closed, he realized and he opened them to see Erestor grinning, wiping at his mouth with the back of his wrist.

Glorfindel himself felt rather pliant and unwilling to move, but Erestor squirmed up along his body to rest beside him, one pale arm draped across a golden, heaving chest. “You okay?” Glorfindel worriedly asked, not voicing his fears.

“Dandy,” Erestor told him with a laugh. “No, you weren’t too rough,” he said to the unasked questions, and kissed Glorfindel’s shoulder.

“Good,” Glorfindel sighed with relief. They lay still for awhile, content to hold one another and say nothing. Then, Glorfindel wondered, “So, you, uh, ready for a return favor?”

“Oh,” Erestor sighed, “No.” He chuckled a little. “Have to wait a bit longer for that, I’m afraid.”

“Do you know . . . how much longer?”

Erestor laughed and hugged Glorfindel close. “Not much. Not much at all.”

“Really?!” Glorfindel was excited. “Brilliant.”

= = = = =

One day, Erestor noticed the minions, as Glorfindel still referred to them, were acting oddly around him. Jittery. Bug-eyed. Stuttering.

He cornered them in the library’s lounge one day, when Dinendal and Saelbeth were assisting in Melpomaen’s research. He snuck upon them. “Boys.”

They jumped.

“So,” Erestor told them. “Ask me. You’ve obviously done your other questioning. So ask me.”

They exchanged looks. Saelbeth stood from the sofa he had been sprawled on. He hunched a little as he shuffled forward. “You’re him, then. The Harlot. Isn’t that right?”

Erestor smiled distantly at him. “Yes. That’s right.”

“Who knows?” Dinendal asked.

“Not many,” Erestor answered.

“What . . . happened to you?” Melpomaen asked. “How did things change?”

Erestor shook his head. “You don’t need to know.”

Saelbeth then asked, “Why did you tell us?”

Erestor shrugged. “People might be whispering of it in future, if they aren’t already. I thought you ought to hear it from me. Besides. You have your own little . . . oddities, yes? Isn’t it good to know you aren’t alone? I’m always here, as is Glorfindel, if you ever need someone to talk to.”

= = = = =

As for Cellel, she loved Imladris.

She wandered the dying gardens, communing with all the late-blooming plants and speaking at length with the many gardeners and others who loved growing things as much as she, oftentimes saying, ‘what I wouldn’t give to live with gardens like these!’

The libraries were a revelation to her; admittance to the Mirkwood archives was limited, as the caves’ atmosphere was far from conducive to the long life of parchment and all papers were handled with the most tender of care. Therefore, Cellel handled the books in Imladris as sacred things, practically terrified of accidentally damaging them. But, she did not spend overlong there. She claimed that too much reading ‘strains my eyes’ and that the air in the library was ‘too papery.’

She was in the Hall of Fire every night, from the minute the doors opened until the last song of the night, continuously proclaiming to any who would listen that ‘the Greenwood has NOTHING like this; it’s AMAZING.’

And, she met Arwen.

Cellel was all of a nervous flutter, hardly knowing what to do with herself. She had only two dresses and she was wearing the better one, a bit of satin and lace, also green, but nothing near as fancy as the Lady of Imladris wore, and Cellel -- poor thing -- did not know whether to bow or to curtsy or what to say or anything.

But Arwen, kind soul, smiled and promised Cellel that nothing was to be expected of her, that they were just two girls with nothing better to do than embroidery and gossip. Arwen learned that Cellel had never been taught to embroider and a fast friendship was formed.

= = = = =

Winter grew in Imladris, cold and still. There was no snow, there had not been in many years. But it was cold. And life slowed to a crawl.

One afternoon, Erestor and Glorfindel lay in bed in the Winter Room. They were both wearing their winter robes and lay atop the covers. Only their hands touched, fingers loosely interwoven. Glorfindel stared at the canopy. Erestor stared over his chest at the desk.

They were quiet.  
 Life was good.

Erestor suddenly sat up. He was looking hard at something on the desk. “Glorfindel. Get up.”

Glorfindel slowly sat up. “Why? What are we doing?”

Erestor stood from the bed, walking round it to the desk. “We’re going to the kitchens.” He picked up the small jar of Greenwood vanilla and held it to the light, where it shone faintly red and thick.

“Um . . . why?”

Erestor stowed the jar into a pocket. He looked at his love. “We’re going to make cookies.”

= = = = =

Erestor seemed to glide down the hall, but Glorfindel had to trot to keep up. “Erestor,” he said, slightly belligerent, “How long has it been since you actually made cookies?”

Erestor stopped. He looked at Glorfindel. “Well, let’s see,” he wondered to himself, looking vaguely upward and moving his lips as though counting. “The last time, I must have been . . . four-hundred sixty-something years old, and now I’m . . . three-thousand two-hundred sixty-eight? Yes. You do the math.”

“That’s . . . a long time, Erestor.”

“Glorfindel. Cookies aren’t something you forget. It’s like riding a horse.” He turned, stalking toward the kitchens.

Glorfindel wasn’t so sure. He followed, muttering, “Like you would know.”

= = = = =

Glorfindel stood uncertainly at Erestor’s elbow, looking over the shorter Elf’s shoulder at the array of ingredients spread out on the countertop before them. “Erestor. Why are we making cookies?”

“It’s winter. I want to.” Then he turned to smile sweetly up at Glorfindel. “Don’t you want to?”

“Well, I’m used to just eating the cookies.” He stressed the word, ‘eating.’

Erestor rolled his big brown eyes. “Come on,” he said in a persuasive manner, “this will be fun.”

“Fun?” Glorfindel asked, peering between hanging pots to the other end of the kitchen where the cooks were preparing that evening’s dinner. “Looks like WORK to me.”

Erestor poured together some of the dry ingredients. He passed the bowl to Glorfindel and handed him a spoon, saying, “Here. Mix this.”

Glorfindel stepped up beside Erestor at the counter and slowly, awkwardly, mixed the flour and salt and some things he did not recognize together. He looked over to watch Erestor pour together melted butter and three kinds of sugar and what appeared to be a generous amount of that dark dark vanilla, which was strong. Glorfindel could smell it. It smelled good.

Without warning, Erestor took away the flour mixture and pressed the next bowl on him. “Here,” he said without preamble, “Mix this.”

Grumbling good-naturedly -- Glorfindel refused to admit it was a bit fun -- he took the bowl, carefully turning over the butter and the sugar. He watched as Erestor started a third bowl, bringing over some chocolate he’d already melted and added some thickening agent like flour, only not.

When Glorfindel’s butter-sugar mixture was thoroughly blended, Erestor again took the bowl and passed him the chocolate one. “Here--”

“Mix this,” Glorfindel finished for him. “I get the idea. Hey, why am *I* doing all the hard bits?”

Erestor raised a brow.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“The eyebrow thing.”

“What eyebrow thing?”

“You know,” Glorfindel persisted, “the Peredhel eyebrow thing. They all do it.”

“Oh, you mean this?” Erestor raised a brow.

“Stop it!” Glorfindel was laughing.

“Why?”

“I dunno!” he sputtered. “It’s weird.”

Erestor snorted. He shook his head and continued his work. He was adding various things, like eggs, to the butter-sugar-vanilla, which he was churning to a delicious smelling syrupy mess. Stirring a little too vigorously, Erestor discovered a spatter of batter on his wrist, which he promptly licked off.  
 Glorfindel stared. He had stopped stirring.

Erestor didn’t notice. He licked his lips, contemplating, then smiled and swiped a finger along the spoon, gathering a good amount, and popped it into his mouth.

“You eat the batter?!” The warrior was scandalized.

Erestor looked at him with wide eyes a moment before popping his finger out of his mouth. He couldn’t have been sterner when he replied, “Glorfindel. By Elbereth, man, haven’t you ever been in a kitchen? Haven’t you ever made cookies?” He held up the dripping spoon. “It’s the best part!”

Glorfindel cast him a disbelieving glare, but then he saw the sudden, wicked twinkle in Erestor’s deep brown eyes. The dark-haired Elf with a white smear of flour along his cheek dropped the batter-smattered spoon on the sugar-scattered table without thought. He stuck his flour-lined hand into the incomplete batter to scoop out two fingerfuls of dripping cookie mix the color of brown sugar. He lifted the hand to dart his pink tongue out and lick along the crease between his fingers to catch a dollop of sugary cookie mix. Then he held the fingers out to Glorfindel, the honey-thick substance shining like molasses or syrup and threatening to drip down to the floor.

Glorfindel accepted the challenge, suddenly grabbing Erestor’s wrist, which made the Elf jump and blink in surprise. Glorfindel’s tongue snuck out, wet and red, to taste the sugared mix, and then sucked both fingers totally into his mouth, wrapping his tongue neatly around them and staring all the while with indigo-darkened eyes. He sucked and sucked and swallowed the sweet stuff down, moaning all the while, until not a trace was left and he pulled Erestor’s hand from his mouth with an audible *pop.* “Mmm,” he silkily agreed. “Best part.” He licked his lips and winked.

Momentarily forgetting the cookies, Erestor stared vaguely at Glorfindel’s mouth, grabbed hold of his blue shirt in fisted hands, and dragged the warrior firmly forward and slightly down to claim his sugar-stained lips.

When Erestor considered himself done, he pushed Glorfindel away, smiled, and turned back to the mixing bowl.

“Uh,” Glorfindel intelligently interjected. “So, do we HAVE to finish making the cookies? Cause . . . we could, you know, go back to the room . . .”

“We’re making the cookies, Glorfindel, THEN we can go back to the room.”

“Oh.” Glorfindel pouted. “All right. Tyrant.”

“Softy.”

“Uh . . .” Glorfindel cleared his throat, “that’s NOT the term I would use.”

Erestor couldn’t help it. He giggled. He glanced down at Glorfindel’s groin, bit back his smile and turned back to the batter, slowly adding the flour-mix and trying not to laugh. “Here,” he snickered. “Mix this.” He handed over the spoon.

Glorfindel growled, but good-naturedly gripped hold of the spoon and began to vigorously stir in the thickening flour, which immediately sent a white cloud billowing up into his startled face.

Erestor sniggered. “You look like a ghost.”

“Not funny.”

“Mm-hmm. Yes it is.”

= = = = =

The next hour was spent making cookies, a process frequently interrupted by immoral glances, wandering hands, batter stealing, kissing, and various other distractions.

By the time the cookies were cooled and frosted and lined along a plate, ready for consumption, Erestor had worked Glorfindel into a frustrated frenzy.

The Counselor ate a cookie, licked the crumbs from his lips, and then stretched, long and tempting. He was still unaware of the flour that decorated his cheek and Glorfindel was still rather covered in it. “Well,” Erestor said, eyeing the window, “it’s nearing dinnertime. There’s some work I meant to catch up on; I’ll see you later.”

Glorfindel grabbed his arm. “Oh no-no-no-no noooo you don’t! Remember, Erestor? Make cookies? Go to room?”

Erestor somehow maneuvered himself out of Glorfindel’s grasp. “Not really. Besides, there’s dinner on soon.”

And he walked right out of the kitchen.

= = = = =

Moments later, Glorfindel was still standing there, completely bewildered as to how he’d just let Erestor get away with that stunt. “WHAT am I DOING?” he asked no one. “What is HE doing??”

He ate a cookie.

“Blast.”

He ate another.

“Captain Glorfindel?!” Dinendal skidded into the kitchen. “You’re needed in the yard right away!”

Glorfindel sighed and shrugged on his robe. “It’s just as well,” he answered, half to Dinendal and half to himself as he followed the youth out of the well-warmed kitchen and into the drafty corridor. “What’s happened now?” he asked, with both concern and an air of ‘what on earth did they manage to do this time?’ He held out a handful of treats. “Cookie?”

“Oh, sure.”

= = = = =

Glorfindel was more than perturbed to learn that two of his men had got into an actual fight, over a girl of all things, and he had to come all the way down there to sort it out.

His breath misted the air as his fury, over a great many things, was released on the two Elves who had been most ill-fated in their timing.

They all of them who were unfortunate enough to have been there upon Glorfindel’s arrival cowered in a long line against the barracks wall as he gave them a serious chewing-out.

After the duo was dealt with and Glorfindel was assured that there would be no brawling on the yard for a VERY long time, he stood aside and watched with a distinct glower as the men -- all of them -- performed their punishment: ten laps around the barracks.

Dinendal stood beside Glorfindel. He fidgeted. He watched the guardsmen run. He watched Glorfindel glower. He watched the distant clock tower, which would chime the dinner hour any minute.

“Dinendal. Either stop that squirming or join the men in a jog.”

“Yessir,” Dinendal spouted, renewing an effort to keep still.

When the bell finally rung out, loud and clear, Dinendal released a huge lungful of air and turned to Glorfindel, jabbering in one breath as he reached into his pocket. “There wasn’t really a fight; it was just a distraction; it was planned; the men were in on it; they knew you’d be furious; I was told to give you this.” He stood at arm’s length and held out a bit of folded parchment.

Glorfindel but reached out a hand to take it and Dinendal was nothing more than a figure in the distance, disappearing around the barracks.  
 Curiously, Glorfindel unfolded the letter to find Erestor’s neat, spidery writing.

 _Come to the Summer Room_

“Ah . . .” Glorfindel’s brow raised and he allowed himself a smile. “Okay.”

= = = = =

Glorfindel had started at a nonchalant sort of walk. He walked away from the training yard.

Then, it evolved into a quick walk. He walked quickly up the path to the House.

The quick walk became a trot. He trotted around the Bath House and up the stairs about the tower.

The trot progressed into a jog. He jogged down the wing of the Resident Quarters.

The jog became a run. He ran up to the door of the Summer Room.

He stopped. He lifted a hand to knock. He thought. It was his own room. He didn’t knock.

He tried the handle. It was unlocked.

Glorfindel breathed.

He opened the door, just a crack, just enough to peer through, to see the candlelight. He opened the door further and slunk into the room and tried to close the door silently. The click of the handle seemed absurdly loud.

Glorfindel kept his hands behind him on the brass handle and pressed back against the door as though to seep through it, as though to escape the intensity of the vision before him.

The candles were lit. All of them. Including the ones on the chandelier. There was a brisk fire leaping in the hearth. Incense filled the room, something rich and foreign, something exotic.

There was a bottle of oil atop the bedside dresser.

Erestor was on the bed. Naked. Aroused. Staring with trembling intensity at Glorfindel. A rosy hue betrayed his pale flesh. His eyes were lusted black. Slightly tangled, his hair was loose behind him. He supported himself on his elbows, one knee drawn slightly up. His cock was engorged and heavy-looking.

Glorfindel swallowed convulsively.

Erestor was not completely nude, however. The pale, long lines of his legs ended in a pair of suede boots. Scarlet boots.

Glorfindel couldn’t decide whether or not he was surprised at the distinct flush on Erestor’s cheeks.

Erestor forced a smile. “Hi.”

Glorfindel blinked. “Hi.” He looked about the room, at the candles. The incense. The chandelier. Back to Erestor. “I got your note.”

“I see.”

“Nice boots.”

“Thanks.” Erestor shifted nervously on the bed, and glanced away from Glorfindel’s avid gaze. “I had them commissioned last month.”

“So.” Glorfindel didn’t press quite so heavily against the door. “You want to what? I don’t want to assume anything here, Erestor . . .”

Erestor looked at him again. His black-brown eyes were so large, there was white all around the iris and his breathing was labored. “I . . .” the word came in a sighing breath. “I want to have sex with you, Glorfindel. I want you inside me. I want to love you completely.”

Glorfindel almost smiled. “You DO love me completely, Erestor. Sex is just an expression of that.”

Licking his lips, Erestor glanced away again. His chest rose and fell with every forced breath. “I like the way you talk to me. I like the way you look at me. I like the life I have with you, Glorfindel.”

“But you won’t meet my eyes when you say that?”

Erestor looked at him. “I don’t want to ruin that.”

Glorfindel smiled. He slowly moved away from the door, carefully skirting the edge of their cushioned hearth area. “Aaahhhh,” he said in a deep-throated rumble, with an air of sudden comprehension, eyes alight. “I understand you now. Erestor,” he said the name firmly, as though to make sure he had the Elf’s attention. “You say you are slowly awakening. If it is anything like your previous awakening, I shudder to think at your . . . needs. I understand if you would seek physical pleasure from others beside myself. I don’t care.”

“You don’t care?” Erestor could not hide his pure astonishment, black-brown eyes warm and shocked.

Glorfindel moved toward the bed. “Elstras didn’t care.” He sat on the bed. “And Erestor, you can’t tell me he didn’t love you, even if you are still unsure of your own feelings after all these years.”

“By Elbereth, Glorfindel, I don’t know what to say.”

“I suppose there’s a first time for everything,” was Glorfindel’s comeback.

Erestor smiled ruefully. “I don’t know why,” he shook his head. “I never thought you’d react that way.”

“Why not?” Glorfindel shrugged, slipping off his robe. “You yourself have dubbed me the most generous Elf you’ve ever met.”

“Yes, but,” Erestor shook his dark head. “The difference between love and sex is hard enough to comprehend without drawing shaky, nearly invisible lines between them.”

Glorfindel took off his shirt and kicked off his boots. “Well, Erestor, let’s see if we can make the distinction clearer. Firstly, I love you. Secondly, you love me. Clear so far?”

Erestor nervously nodded, watching Glorfindel disrobe.

“That’s it,” Glorfindel told him. “As long as that never stops, then all is right in my little share of the world.

“So--” Erestor choked off his own words. “I’ve never had this much trouble before.”

“So I gathered.”

“I don’t want to shock you.”

“Too late.”

“All right. I don’t know if you’re ready to hear this.”

“Try me.”

Erestor just opened his mouth and said it. “Melpomaen made hints . . .”

“You’re not going to spell it out for me?”

“HE didn’t.”   
“Melpomaen made hints?” Glorfindel shrugged. “Like an offer?”

“An invitation,” Erestor admitted. “I don’t know how he worked up the nerve to ask me. It took him a while, I have to say that.”

“And you want my . . . permission?”

Erestor shrugged and looked away. “Opinion. Judgment. Permission, if it comes to that, aye.”

“I’ve already given it,” Glorfindel promised, slowly taking up Erestor’s nearer hand to place a kiss on his hot and sweating palm. “Just remember not to give so much of yourself away. Take something back, in return.”

Erestor canted his head, expression serious.

“What?”

“Galadriel said something like that.”

“Galadriel is a very wise woman.”

Erestor shook his head and looked away. “I’m not nearly ready to think about other offers and other partners. I’m more than content with you.”

“For now,” Glorfindel suggested.

“Right.”

“Fine.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really. It’s not in my nature to be jealous or hard-hearted. If I had a problem with any of this, you would know by now. I’m glad you’re talking to me about it now.” Then he amended, “At all. I’m that glad you’re strong enough, that I’m worthy enough.”

Erestor suddenly let out a bark of a laugh.

“What?”

“Worthy? I never questioned the worthiness of my lovers. They were all worthy in my eyes.”

“But I’m not just a lover.”

“No.” Erestor was all seriousness. “You’re the one whom I love.”

Glorfindel thought about that a moment. “I see where the confusion comes in.” He chuckled. “Can I kiss you now?”

“Please.”

“No need to beg,” said Glorfindel, leaning forward, “unless you want to.”

Erestor finally let himself reach out, curling a hand about Glorfindel’s cheek and guiding him forward.

They kissed. And it was meant to be sweet. But it couldn’t be for long. Glorfindel was too eager, Erestor too desperate. The kiss grew deeper all at once, delving and delicious as Erestor’s hand moved to grip the back of Glorfindel’s neck and lock him there.

The golden warrior threw one arm over Erestor to brace himself, still entangled -- entwined and ensnared -- in their kiss, in one another. Unintentionally, Glorfindel forced Erestor down flat to the bed, laying heavy atop him and moving together, Glorfindel’s trousers the only boundary between them.

Erestor smiled into the kiss and mischievously rolled them over, straddling Glorfindel’s hips to reach down and untie the drawstring. They parted -- such anguish! -- to remove the last of Glorfindel’s clothing, only so that they could fly together again, skin to skin, all over glorious and hot, rolled over and over the red linen sheets, playing (not fighting) for dominance.

Glorfindel let Erestor win, his shoulders slammed into the downy soft mattress, Erestor’s hands on his shoulders, swiftly dancing elsewhere: over an arched throat, down a falling rising chest, to pluck at browned nipples as one would a tightened lute. Glorfindel shrieked and twisted against the linen, one hand fisting the crimson quilt, the other set tight round Erestor’s arm, just above the elbow, seeking something steady, something solid to hold.

This didn’t seem to limit Erestor’s nimble hands, which wound their teasing paths across the golden skin, pinching, caressing, and teasing at turns. Astounding, arousing, and amazing until Glorfindel could lay back no longer, but stake out retaliation in his turn.

He grabbed the ivory Elf, flushed like pale roses, by hip and shoulder, swiftly driving him over and then rolling atop him; Glorfindel moved like a predator, like a dancer, like a lover. He dragged his palms from shoulders to chest, sliding, rubbing the flushing skin to darker rosy hues, those big hands covering such a span of skin as to engulf nearly all of Erestor’s chest.

Those big hands, blanketing him in living warmth and loving heat, upbraiding, reproving guilty flesh for its tempting, oh so tempting, beauty, hue, and feel. ‘I love thee,’ sang long, strong fingers. ‘I love thee,’ murmured callused palms. ‘I love thee,’ promised blanketing hands, striving hands, loving hands.

“Love me,” Erestor whispered. Perhaps a plea, perchance an order, possibly a wondering observation. He opened already half-closed eyes to stare intensely into Glorfindel’s. “Show me.”

Glorfindel nearly laughed, but didn’t. He smiled instead, with his whole being, and he vowed as he bowed his golden head, “Always.”

Then, they fell to more kisses, sharp and biting, quick and fighting, soft and soothing, deep and proving, as Erestor had asked.

Then Glorfindel, with those big hands, sought a path from heaving chest to taut belly and lower still between long legs to touch for the first the time the long and heavy length of his lover, swelled and hot and needful. Erestor sang out approving sighs and calls: ‘yes!’ and ‘more’ and ‘Glorfindel!’

Parting long legs, scarlet-booted legs, Glorfindel settled himself between them, sitting back on his heels and relishing the glory of Erestor. Writhing, twisting, moaning, pleading, thrusting, calling out, as Glorfindel created a sheath with his hands. Then one of those strong and tanned hands struck out like a serpent for a tasseled pillow, coaxed it under thrusting hips, felt below the tightened sacs.

Erestor’s lust-black eyes shot open. “Take me. Now.”

Glorfindel could barely form words, so intoxicated was he by sensation. Blue eyes, heavy-lidded, flicked downward. “What about--?”

“I already prepared myself,” Erestor explained in a small voice, half in a whimper, and half in a groan.

“Sweet Eru,” Glorfindel cursed with slurred sounds, “what a pretty picture that must have been!”

“So take me,” Erestor begged, parting his legs further still, arching his hips and reaching out with empty hands. “Please!” as though he half-expected Glorfindel to loose interest.

Glorfindel met one searching hand with his own, fingers laced together. Long over lean, tan under pale. Clutching, they were bound together.

With some small difficulty, Glorfindel readied himself, with sweat and saliva and their own leaking juices mingled. He tested Erestor’s entrance with one thick finger, to be sure. Then, he breached the panting, shuddering body. Bit by bit, so slow and wary. Though it was a torture for him to do so with any care.

Erestor hissed and keened, knowing fullness after being so long bereft, knowing completeness after being so long hopeless. “In me, in me, in me,” he huffed the crooning mantra again and again. It ended in a high-pitched wail when Glorfindel skewered him entirely. Totally and wholly and for a heartbeat, there was a blinding sigh of relief, for so much that had come before, for the so much else that would come after.

Then, they moved, together and sweetly. Sweet as they wanted to be, sweet as they had tried to be, ‘sweet’ was overcome once more by ‘eager’ and by ‘desperate.’

Glorfindel moved in him, moved over him, moved.

Erestor moved around him, moved under him. They moved together.

Chest to chest, one within the other, hands still joined. They mated. They made love.

In a moment of weakness, when their pace was still just this side of slow, Erestor blurted out, “Will you always love me?”

Through the crazy pleasure-pain of ecstasy, Glorfindel grinned and kissed an arched throat. “I should like to think so.” He kissed a pointing chin. He looked into insane black eyes. “I will always love you, harlot and counselor,” he panted with his thrusts, “all together.”

Erestor wrapped pale/flushed arms about the great torso, pulling and holding him close.

Glorfindel remained deep inside.

“I love you,” Erestor gasped, saying over and over the words he’d previously dreaded to utter. “I love you.” As though the words purified his past. “I love you.” Though the past did not need purification. “I love you.” It was encouragement, and enticement. “I love you.” It was a promise, and a truth. “I love you!”

Then Glorfindel broke free, thrusting wildly, bucking like a stallion, untamed and free. His hair fanned around him, a golden wash of silk. His skin shone like bronze in the light of hundreds of candles.

Erestor answered thrust for thrust, whine for groan, kiss for bite.

What glory united them, what love bound them, what pleasure joined them!

They chorused their pleasure to the setting sun, to the candled room, to one another repeatedly in words and not-quite-words. Their milky white pleasure coalesced to that burst of black-white lightening. In waves, in coils, in rings, it washed and sprang and reverberated through them, carrying them for a while together.

It faded, it faded slowly, with unequal shallow thrusts. It faded until naught remained but a high peace and sense of wonderment, and fulfillment, and great elation.

Glorfindel slipped from the sated body, and then collapsed half atop the paling body. He did not see the smile on Erestor’s lips. But he heard the impassioned whisper, aimed for his pointing ear, “Glorfindel. I have found my joy again.”

= = = = =

The night seemed still, the fire trickled down to a murmuring glow, the candles murdered themselves with muddled hisses in puddled wax. The incense hung about the room, but trippingly began to dissipate. A hazy swell of moonlight indirectly infiltrated the room through falling silks of peach and lemon.

Erestor spoke to the peace of the room as much as he spoke to Glorfindel. “There was a prayer we kept for bedtime in the Greenwood. It was taught to me by my mother when I was but the tiniest lad.”

Glorfindel’s attempt to whisper manifested instead in an exhausted croak. “Will you tell it to me?”

Erestor nodded once, his cheek pressing on Glorfindel’s broad shoulder. He petted golden hair and recited:

“Give to me my hibernation,  
Summon me to sleep.  
Let me rest my weary head,  
And drift into the deep.”

And that is just what they did.

= = = = =

Yet again, Glorfindel and Erestor fell into a routine that suited them. Life was lived truly together, amidst Imladris duties (which they never found to be a chore) and shared meals and quiet times and times spent making love.

One month brought them a swift winter, bitter in its cold, awful in its freezing rain, for Elrond was loath to let snow interfere with life in the Valley.

Thusly it was that Erestor sought out his Lord one day, to beg sweet entreaty of him. “It has been many years,” he reminded his half-Elven Lord, “since snow has touched the dead-slumbering land of wintered Imladris. Surely, a brief snowfall shall not do much harm.”

Elrond had developed a remarkable ability to look innocent. “Why do you come to me? I hold some sway over this Valley, true, but to suggest that I command the clouds themselves . . .”

“Oh but you do,” Erestor told him. “Long have I lived here and long have I watched you, my Lord. Though you expose not the length and breadth of your power, you cannot hide it from those who know you best.” And he gestured to the hand that bore the ring, though naught but Elrond himself could see it. “Many of your secrets are known to me, my Lord.”

“And you but ask a snowfall?” Elrond questioned. “Why in the world?”

“Why? Because snow was the catalyst that exposed my wintered emotions to Glorfindel, and snow he so dearly loves.”

= = = = =

“Erestor!!! Erestor, wake up!”

“No,” said Erestor into the pillow, muffled and slurred. “Go away, insane person.” He dragged another pillow over top of his head.

Glorfindel pulled it off. Then, he committed a severe crime. He yanked all the covers from the bed, exposing Erestor’s naked body to the frigid air.

“GLORFINDEL!!!” He was awake now. “You are IN FOR IT!!”

Glorfindel ducked the flying pillow. He was not deterred. “Up, Erestor! Get up!”

Erestor flopped back down onto the mattress, curling into a ball and snuggling into what was left of the pillows. “No. Evil Elf.”

“I’m not!” Glorfindel protested, as though sincerely affronted. “It’s snowing! Come on!”

“Snowing?” Erestor asked without opening his eyes. “Are you sure? Did you check?”

“I don’t have to CHECK!” Glorfindel told him, practically insulted. “I just KNOW. I feel it in my belly.”

Erestor giggled.

“I DO!” Glorfindel insisted. “Come on, we have things to do.”

“I can’t play in the snow all day,” Erestor fake-lectured at him. “I have grown-up things to do.”

“No you don’t,” Glorfindel protested. “It’s snowing; take the day off.”   
“Oh, just because you say so?” Erestor queried, opening one eye to peer over his shoulder.

“Well yeah!”

Erestor rolled his eyes. “Well . . .” he dithered.

 _“Please!!!!”_

“. . . I don’t have anything of particular import scheduled for the day . . .”

 _"And?"_

“I could be persuaded . . .”

“If?”

“If you wear that white outfit, you know, with all the . . . white?”

“Yeah, my snow clothes, of course,” Glorfindel answered, a bit nonplussed. “I always wear my snow clothes when it snows.”

Erestor rolled over finally, sitting up to look at his lover. “Yeah? Well, it turns me on.”

Glorfindel’s brows shot up. “Really?” He had a funny smile on his face.

“Uh-huh.” He shrugged. “Don’t know why, but it does. . . . You’re going to use this to your advantage now. Aren’t you?”

“You really have to ask?”

Erestor laughed and scooted to the edge of the bed. “Wait till I tell you some of my other turn-ons.” He stood and walked sedately around the bed, past Glorfindel, and into the Winter Room.

Glorfindel stared dumbly after him. Then he followed. “Well? Like what?!?”

= = = = =

Glorfindel was swift to dress and when he was done, he kneeled on the blue-cushioned window seat to throw aside the heavy cobalt drapes and smile at the winter scene. “The snow still falls,” he told Erestor with a happy lilt to his voice. “Big and heavy, like downy soft feathers to collect on the ground in a blanket of pure white, like a shroud to let rest the earth.”

“And I accused you of having no head for poetry.” Erestor smiled softly at Glorfindel and asked, “Are you going to go wake the troops?”

Glorfindel glanced at him before staring out the window again. “No. The twins will take care of it. I’d like to go to breakfast with you.”

Erestor grinned sweetly, though Glorfindel did not see. “I am glad.”

= = = = =

They chose to dine in the Mess Hall that morning, amid the rowdy youngsters and soldiers eager to play in the snow. They were quite a picture: Glorfindel with golden hair knotted in loose strands at the back of his head, all in white wool and cotton from neck to toes with tall boots and white rope belt. Sitting across from him was Erestor, black hair restrained by the commonly plaited braids from his temples but otherwise loose, and all in long tunic and leggings and boots of black.

They each had a generous bowl of porridge, stirring in milk and sugar at turns and eating it quickly before it cooled.

Glorfindel was itching to get out to the field, Erestor knew, and went with him, overseeing all the preparations for the snow battle that would occur after lunch.

Erestor joined those in the center of the field, sculpting snow creatures with the aid of hot water and the addition of icicles for teeth and horns and tusks, until the white field was a topiary of ice and snow animals which never existed in anything but legend and the fantastical minds of the minstrels that had shaped them. Cellel was watching with Arwen from the upper balcony the antics of the Elves on the field and Erestor waved to them.

Arwen waved back and Cellel blew him a kiss from her green-gloved hand.

When the bell tower rang for the noontime meal and the Elves all ran for the halls, Erestor took Glorfindel’s hand in his own to tug him away from the House, promising, “I have a gift for you.”

Glorfindel canted his head in surprise and followed where Erestor led, down the length of the tourney field and round to the front of the House where, in the forecourt, awaited a sleigh. It was pulled by two white horses all done up in red ribbons and brass bells, stomping their great hooves in the snow and puffing their hot breath in streams of steam as the snow still fell. The sleigh was white, with long runners, and sitting up in the driver’s seat with long reins in his hand sat green-clad Dinendal, the snow peppering his auburn hair as eyes twinkled merrily in their direction.

Glorfindel turned in astonishment to Erestor. “How did you know? The snow? The sleigh? What is--”

Erestor silenced him with a kiss. “So many questions,” he said against full lips cooled by winter wind. “Just come now, and ride with me.”

So, they climbed into the sleigh, and pulled a heavy red rug over their laps and cuddled close together as Dinendal snapped the reins and the sleigh took off with a lurch across the snowy court.

The paths that Dinendal took them on were the snow-covered wagon roads used by the farmers to transport their crops. The roads wove through wood and over plain and even crossed the river on a sturdy stone bridge.

Dinendal’s nose and mouth were covered with a green scarf against the biting wind, but Glorfindel and Erestor laughed the whole way, thrilling at the nip of the cold and singing: so they went along the snow-blanketed roads of Imladris.

= = = = =

The sleigh returned not long after the lunch hour, sliding over the snow, pulled by the strong white horses right to the tourney field, where Glorfindel’s men lay waiting behind their snow bunkers and forts. They cheered at the sight of the sleigh, which Dinendel pulled up along side the field between the wall and House. Glorfindel stood from his seat and shouted through cupped hands, “Fire at will! Fire! Fire!”  
 He sat back down and he and Erestor laughed uproariously at the snowballs flying amidst the falling snow and the laughing warriors and the crazy furious fight that erupted, nothing more than the most adventurous play.

So intent was Glorfindel on the ridiculous display that he did not notice Erestor had crept from the other side of the sleigh. He did not notice until a snowball caught the back of his head, and he turned to see Erestor in his lonely black clothes laughing and laughing at him from a small copse of trees, standing in the snow that didn’t quite reach his knees. The snow was all caught in ebony hair and spotted his black tunic in slowly melting specks of white.

Glorfindel took his time, bidding farewell to his oblivious men and thanking Dinendal profusely before he leapt from the floor of the sleigh into the field of snow and through the trees, pursuing the black shadow that fled in fear before him. “Erestor!” he shouted his threat, “You’re going to pay for that!”

But it seemed that, should Erestor wish to be caught, he would have slowed, or thrown another missile, but he did not. He maintained a fairly straight line through the patch of trees, purposefully heading for a distant garden through the tall stone wall. Down the straight brick path he ran, treading atop the snow rather than through it, hair flying out behind him in the thickening snowfall.

Glorfindel maintained a steady distance, keeping Erestor in sight but not getting too close as the dark Elf led the way sprinting to the end of the garden and vaulting over the low garden wall. He ran across a meadow and through the line of trees into the forest. He ran through the white-washed stick-like trees until they opened out tall above him in a clearing all adrift with snow. He stopped and turned, scooping to snatch up a quickly packed ball of snow. Aiming with precision, he caught Glorfindel full in the stomach before the white-clad warrior caught up to him.

Instead of tackling his lover though, Glorfindel stopped short instead, just over an arm’s length away, breathing heavy and thickening the air with his breath. “Erestor,” he panted. “Why did you lead me out here?”

Since Glorfindel seemed more inquisitive than playful, Erestor flung out his arms and fell gracefully backward into the pillowing snow. He crossed his legging-clad legs and crossed his arms behind his head. “Why, Glorfindel, do you think I did?”

He shrugged hopelessly. “I don’t know.” He was even more confused at Erestor’s position in the snow.

Then Erestor reached out his arms. “Come. Let’s make love in the snow.”

Glorfindel threw back his head and laughed. “Is that it? Is that the great plan?” Glorfindel smiled down on Erestor’s sinful countenance. “Don’t try those doe-eyes on me; you know I can’t resist.” He shook his head and chuckled. “In the snow!”

Erestor flipped up the bottom of his tunic so that he could start removing his leggings. “Yes please.”

“You’re incorrigible!”

“That’s the idea.”

“Get on your knees before you freeze your best bits.”

Erestor laughed and obeyed. He quickly kneeled up to sneak his hands through the layers of Glorfindel’s clothes to take him in his mouth in a swift preparation.

Glorfindel gasped, at the overwhelming sensation and at the suddenness of it. He unknowingly weaved his strong fingers through Erestor’s black hair as Erestor withdrew a small bottle from somewhere on his person.

Removing himself from Glorfindel’s hold, Erestor withdrew, coating Glorfindel’s shaft in a sweet-spicy smelling oil. Then he turned about and fell to his elbows in the snow, offering himself up.

Glorfindel dropped to his knees as one might fall to sudden prayer, and his worship was no less sincere. He took the bottle that was handed him and quickly coated Erestor’s insides with the slicker-than-slick foreign oil. “Ready?” he asked, easily aroused by Erestor’s antics.

“Ready ready ready!” Erestor agreed, already moving in rhythmic anticipation of the pleasure to come, hindering Glorfindel’s progress.

“Hold still!” Glorfindel laughingly commanded.

Erestor complied only long enough for Glorfindel to sink in, bury himself.

Knees cold in the snow as it still fell in drifting waves about them, still clothed in ebony and ivory in the brown-skeleton forest draped in new-fallen white, they recounted that old harmony with ever-multiplying variations.

= = = = =

It was not even dark yet when Glorfindel and Erestor closeted themselves away for the night, choosing to bed down in the cozy Winter Room after a swift dip in the Bath House tubs.

They wore thick house robes and slippers as Erestor lit a fire and Glorfindel fetched a covered tray of hot food from the kitchen.

Having missed lunch and dinner, they fell to the food with gusto once their door was closed to the world and Erestor hung their black iron kettle upon a waiting hook and swung it to sit over the fire.

They were content to say nothing for the time, instead singing a mournful winter tune softly together, humming or wordless as often as not until the kettle spitted steam and Erestor swung the hooked arm back out to steep the tea. “Hot toddy?” he asked as he took up a bottle of Dwarvish whisky from the bookshelf.

Glorfindel smiled and nodded and twenty minutes later, they were wrapped up together, naked in bed, sipping at mugs of whisky-sharpened tea and saying nothing, content forever to be just like that.

When the fire dulled to something less than a roar and teacups long were set aside and bed curtains were pulled around three sides of the bed, Erestor turned to his love to say, “I love Imladrian winters. And I love knowing that I have a Summer to go home to.”

“And you love me,” Glorfindel pointed out cheekily.

“Indeed I do.”

Then they lay down together entwined beneath the covers that were pulled up to their chins.

Erestor easily fell to a deep and dreamless sleep, but Glorfindel stayed up, watching the fire in the marble hearth sleepily burn itself away. He stroked the silky black strands of his love’s hair. He could hear the winter wind whistling outside and the last crackling remnants of their eve’s fire. Though he could neither see nor hear it, Glorfindel knew that the snow still fell outdoors. Then he gathered Erestor as close as he could into his embrace without waking the Elf, and he smiled into the darkness, and slept, never more contented.

= = = = =

The end.


End file.
